1 

- 

1 

llililia*^-- 


'ti;.^il;iil£iU:;i 


'I 

j^ti'iiu*!         f 

TALKS  TO  WRITERS 


TALKS  TO  WRITERS 


BY 


LAFCADIO  HEARN 


SELECTED  AND  EDITED 
WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION 

BY 

JOHN  ERSKINE,  Ph.D. 

Professor  of  English,  Columbia  University 


NEW  YORK 
DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1920 


•  •  • 


COPYBiGHT,   1915,   1917,  1920, 
By  MITCHELL  MoDONALD 


/  i-l  f) 


WUHJH   « 


VAIL-BALLOU    COMPANY 
•IMSMAMTOM  AND  NCW  YORK 


•  ••••■•        • 

•••••••• 

•T»      •  ••      ••,••      • 


■PA/.5- 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Introduction vii 

I     On  THE  Relation  of  Life  and  Charac- 
ter TO  Literature i 

II     On  Composition       .......  33 

'^'III     Studies  of  Extraordinary  Prose  ...  72 

I     The  Norse  Writers 72 

II     Sir  Thomas  Browne 86 

III  Bjornson 102 

IV  Baudelaire 120 

IV    The  Value  of  the   Supernatural  in 

Fiction        130 

V    The  Question  of  the  Highest  Art  .      .   150 

-fVI     Tolstoi's  Theory  of  Art 156 

VII     Note  upon  the  Abuse  and  the  Use  of 

Literary  Societies 174 

VIII     On  Reading   .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .185 

IX     Literature  and  Public  Opinion  .      .     .  215 

X     Farewell  Address 229 

Index 239 


4^9143 


These  chapters  are  reprinted  from  Lafcadlo 
Hearn's  *'  Interpretations  of  Literature,"  1915* 
and  from  his  ''Life  and  Literature,"  1917  — 
collections  of  the  lectures  he  gave  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Tokyo  between  1896  and  1902.  Since 
the  appearance  of  these  lectures  there  has  been 
a  demand  for  separate  groups  of  them  in  a  form 
more  available  to  the  student.  The  present  vol- 
ume, therefore,  brings  together  Hearn's  remarks 
on  the  art  of  writing,  in  the  hope  that  such  an 
anthology  of  his  principles  and  opinions  may  aid 
those  who  aspire  in  the  literary  craft. 

For  the  benefit  of  the  reader  who  may  make 

the  acquaintance  of  Hearn's  lectures  for  the  first 

time  in  this  volume,  it  should  be  said  that  he 

lectured  very  slowly,  choosing  simple  words  and 

constructions,  in  order  that  the  foreign  language 

might  be   as  easy  as  possible  for  his  Japanese 

students;  and  some  of  his  students  managed  to 

take  down  many  of  his  lectures  word  for  word. 

From  their  notes  —  the  only  record  we  have  of 

Lafcadio  Hearn  the  teacher  —  these  chapters  are 

selected.     No   attempt  has  been  made  at  what 

might  be  called  a  reconstruction  of  the  text.     Ob- 

vii 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

vious  slips  In  single  words  and  phrases  have  been 
corrected,  but  passages  of  any  elaborate  difficulty 
have  been  omitted.  The  punctuation  has  been 
revised,  and  all  dates,  titles  and  quotations  have 
been  verified.  If  there  is  any  oversight  in  any 
of  these  details,  the  fault  is  to  be  laid  to  the 
editor  and  to  the  note-takers,  not  to  the  lecturer. 
Should  the  reader  be  troubled  by  occasional  repe- 
titions in  the  various  chapters,  even  by  an  occa- 
sional contradiction,  he  should  remember  that 
these  are  spoken  words,  which  Hearn  had  no 
opportunity  to  revise. 


II 

Lafcadio  Hearn's  ideas  about  the  art  of  writing 
are  the  Ideas  not  of  a  journaHst  nor  of  a  theorist, 
but  of  one  who  practises  the  art.  He  had  a  very 
simple  body  of  doctrine,  as  available  as  truth  it- 
self, and  perhaps  as  rarely  attended  to.  Prob- 
ably he  would  say  that  he  gave  his  students  noth- 
ing new;  yet  what  he  says  comes  to  us  with  the 
force  of  originality,  like  all  sincere  remarks  of 
the  craftsman  on  his  experience  and  his  ideals. 
The  most  original  thing  an  artist  can  do,  he  held, 
is  to  tell  the  truth  about  life  as  he  has  lived  it; 
and  the  highest  originality  of  the  critic  is  to  an- 
nounce principles,  however  old,   and   deductions 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

from  those  principles,  which  he  has  arrived  at 
through  experience.  Of  course  the  artist  will  give 
us  truth  as  it  Ts  affected  by  his  own  personaHty, 
and  the  critic  will  give  us  principles  as  he  inter- 
prets them;  the  Intelligent  reader,  however,  will 
not  be  distressed  by  this  mingling,  will  be  pleased 
by  It,  rather,  since  he  can  always  distinguish  and 
enjoy  separately  both  the  experience  recorded  and 
the  poet's  way  of  recording  It,  both  the  principles 
of  criticism  and  the  attitude  of  the  critic. 

Lafcadio  Hearn  believed,  in  the  first  place,  that 
literature  is  an  art  of  emotional  expression  — 
that  it  Is  the  business  of  the  writer  to  record  an 
emotion  and  to  produce  one.  Obviously  he  fol- 
lowed the  romantic  definition  of  literature,  mak- 
ing it  practically  Identical  with  what  Sir  Philip 
Sidney  meant  when  he  spoke  of  poetry.  This 
prejudice  of  Hearn's  for  the  literature  of  power, 
for  the  books  that  move  us,  is  somewhat  singular 
when  we  observe  the  keenness  of  his  appreciation 
for  books  of  another  kind,  especially  for  philo- 
sophical works  such  as  the  writings  of  his  beloved 
Herbert  Spencer.  The  truth  is  that  Hearn 
started  as  a  disciple  of  the  romantic  school,  but 
his  intellectual  interests  were  too  great  to  be  con- 
fined within  even  romantic  horizons.  He  seems 
to  have  been  a  wide  reader  in  every  field,  and 
whatever  he  read  he  turned  to  account  in  the 
judgments  he  pronounced  upon  life.     We  may 


X  INTRODUCTION 

sometimes  be  uneasy  when  he  limits  the  term  lit- 
erature to  the  books  of  emotional  power;  we 
should  like  to  include  the  great  historians,  the 
great  scientists  and  the  great  philosophers,  who 
have  left  their  ideas  in  monumental  books;  but 
our  uneasiness  is  perhaps  premature,  for  Hearn 
had  somewhat  the  attitude  of  the  French  race 
which  finds  emotional  possibilities  even  in  the 
realm  of  ideas,  and  to  him  a  book  of  philosophy 
can  very  well  be  emotional.  If  we  take  the  lib- 
erty, moreover,  to  substitute  for  his  term  litera- 
ture the  term  poetry,  we  have  no  further  occa- 
sion to  quarrel  with  him.  Those  books  are 
poetical  which  render  the  quality  of  experience, 
which  record  not  sensations,  as  he  says,  but  our 
\  judgment  upon  sensations,  which  is  emotion.  To 
live  In  consciousness  of  the  experience  we  are 
having,  with  the  mind  thoroughly  alert  to  our 
own  pronouncements  of  good  and  evil  on  each 
moment,  is  to  live  poetically.  Lafcadio  Hearn 
taught,  therefore,  that  the  art  of  writing  is  first 
of  all  the  art  of  observing  one's  relations  to  life, 
one's  emotions,  one's  memories,  one's  mature 
judgments.  In  the  second  place  the  art  of  writ- 
ing is  the  art  of  recording  these  memories,  emo- 
tions and  judgments.  His  attitude  toward  litera- 
ture needs,  perhaps,  no  further  definition.  The 
other  Items  in  his  theory  are  mere  deductions  from 
this  simple  formula. 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

For  example,  he  says  that  literature  should  be 
moral.     We  are  at  first  surprised  to  hear  this 
from  him,  who  certainly  had  little  sympathy  with 
those  preaching  tendencies  which  often  mar  the 
aesthetic    inspiration     of    English    letters.     We 
should  rather  expect  from  him  defence  of  art  for 
art's  sake.     But  it  is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  when  he 
talks  of  art  for  art's  sake,  that  he  tells  us  that 
literature  should  be  moral.     If  when  we  read  a 
book  we  come  in  the  presence  of  beauty  and  re- 
spond emotionally  to  that  presence,  we  are  train- 
ing our  character  and  putting  ourselves  in  an  atti- 
tude in  which  it  will  be  more  difficult  to  feel  or 
think  or  do  an  unworthy  thing.     The  greater  the 
beauty  which  the  book  brings  to  us,  the  more  pro- 
nounced this  moral  effect  will  be.     This  doctrine 
is  of  the  utmost  simplicity,  and  artists  accept  it 
as  an  obvious  statement  of  what  men  of  their  tem- 
perament observe  daily;  when  you  leave  the  thea- 
tre after  a  noble  performance,  or  the  concert  hall 
after  hearing  a  great  symphony,  for  the  moment 
at  least  you  are  lifted  above  mean  considerations 
and  are  less  likely  than  at  normal  times  to  act  in 
an  unworthy  way.     This  is  the  effect  of  great  art. 
There  are  many  readers,  however,  of  the  Puritan 
or  literal-minded  tradition,  who  may  misread  the 
doctrine  —  who  may  think,  for  example,  that  a 
book,  to  be  a  work  of  art,  and  therefore  to  pro- 
duce this  moral  effect,  must  concern  itself  with  the 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

preaching  of  morality.  Such  readers  may  not  un- 
derstand that  Hearn,  like  other  artists,  would  get 
from  a  page  of  Flaubert  or  Maupassant  that 
effect  of  beauty  which  in  turn  produces  an  eleva- 
tion of  morals.  Can  a  book  which  deals  with  an 
unhappy  or  not  quite  respectable  subject  be  beau- 
tiful, and  thereby  produce  sound  training  in  good- 
ness? Hearn  would  answer  yes,  and  he  prob- 
ably would  add  that  in  order  to  produce  the  train- 
ing in  goodness  such  a  book  must  not  preach,  for 
if  it  preached,  it  would  be  in  danger  of  becoming 
immoral.  No  doubt  "  Moll  Flanders  "  was  in- 
tended by  Defoe  to  teach  a  sound  lesson,  but  the 
effect  of  it  is  little  short  of  prurient.  Much  of 
"  Madame  Bovary,"  for  an  opposite  example,  is 
intended  to  be  a  work  of  art,  a  picture  of  life 
which  should  charm  by  its  beauty;  the  effect  of 
it,  thinks  Hearn,  is  to  make  us  wish,  not  to  be 
like  Madame  Bovary,  but  to  be  like  the  author  of 
the  book,  who  could  create  a  thing  so  beautiful. 
The  brief  talk  on  the  "  Question  of  the  High- 
est Art  "  is  important  quite  out  of  proportion  to 
its  brevity,  not  only  for  the  illustrations  it  gives 
of  this  doctrine  of  morals  in  literature,  but  also 
for  the  suggestion  of  an  attendant  truth  not  yet 
fully  investigated.  To  prove  his  point  that  the 
highest  kind  of  writing,  though  pursued  for 
esthetic  reasons,  will  have  a  moral  effect,  Hearn 
cites  the  experience  of  love,  which  furnishes  mat- 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

ter  for  most  western  poetry,  fiction  and  drama. 
To  love  another  Is  a  moral  experience,  he  says, 
even  if  the  person  loved  be  unworthy.  Certainly 
it  is  a  great  misfortune  and  a  great  folly  to  love  a 
bad  person;  but  In  spite  of  the  misfortune  and  the 
folly  a  certain  moral  experience  comes  of  It,  which 
has  immense  value  to  a  wholesome  nature.  The 
experience  is  one  which  very  few  poets  and  phi- 
losophers dwell  upon;  yet  it  is  the  Important,  the 
supremely  Important,  aspect  of  love.  What  is  it? 
It  is  the  sudden  impulse  to  unselfishness.  Taking 
it  for  granted,  continues  Hearn,  that  some  forms 
of  beauty  Inspire  men  with  such  affection  as  to 
make  them  temporarily  unselfish,  there  Is  little 
reason  to  doubt  that  in  future  very  much  higher 
forms  of  beauty  will  produce  the  same  effect. 
What  will  those  forms  of  beauty  be?  Hearn 
does  not  know,  but  the  mere  suggestion  of  them 
reminds  us  that  no  one  yet  knows  with  certainty 
the  effect  of  the  kinds  of  beauty  which  art  has 
already  produced.  We  do  not  know,  for  example, 
the  difference  in  character  which  would  be  effected 
by  continued  reading  of  Browning,  of  Matthew 
Arnold,  of  Swinburne.  This  problem  of  the 
power  of  art  on  the  audience  must  some  day  be 
solved;  no  science  of  esthetics  will  begin  to  appeal 
to  us  until  it  brings  some  sort  of  answer  to  the 
question.  Though  he  brought  no  answer,  Hearn 
constantly  played  with  the  mystery,  and  showed 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

that  he  realized  its  importance.  So  long  as  we 
do  not  know  what  will  happen  to  the  man  who 
reads  us,  we  may  preserve  our  peace  of  mind  by 
pretending  the  influence  of  books  is  a  matter  of 
fortune.  When  we  finally  discover,  however, 
what  effect  each  kind  of  writing  has,  to  write  in 
any  kind  will  be  to  take  a  momentous  moral  de- 
cision. 

Ill 

These  general  ideas  of  Hearn's  about  the  art 
of  writing  have  a  wide  and  persistent  bearing. 
Perhaps  the  novice  will  not  be  aware  of  It  at 
once.  The  reader  of  these  lectures  who  desires 
to  become  a  writer  will  perhaps  find  a  more  im- 
mediate interest  in  the  specific  things  Hearn  says 
of  the  craft.  First  of  all,  the  beginner  will  learn, 
with  it  may  be  a  check  to  his  ardour,  that  litera- 
ture is  created  only  by  unceasing  discipline.  The 
art  has  been  so  long  practised,  Hearn  thinks,  that 
we  cannot  afford  to  trust  simply  to  native  ability, 
neglecting  the  hints  and  directions  which  our  pre- 
cursors might  give  us;  the  artist  is  primarily, 
therefore,  a  disciple,  willing  to  follow  proved 
methods  and  to  master  old  technique.  In  the  hope 
of  expriessing  himself  with  some  originality  at 
last.  In  this  point  of  view  Hearn  was  not  de- 
parting from  the  faith  of  that  romantic  period  in 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

European  literature  with  which  his  temperament 
on  the  whole  allied  him;  Shelley  and  Byron,  Hugo 
and  Baudelaire  were  comparatively  learned  men, 
steeped  in  old  literature,  and  their  technique  was 
not  an  improvisation  but  a  turning  of  familiar  in- 
struments to  new  uses.  Moreover,  the  great  lib- 
erating geniuses  of  the  nineteenth  century  had  a 
training  of  the  mind  which  gave  them  powers 
of  observation  such  as  the  improviser  can  hardly 
possess.  It  is  the  mind  that  sees,  rather  than  the 
eye;  the  right  kind  of  reading  and  the  right  sort 
of  meditation  will  do  more  to  cure  us  of  blind- 
ness than  even  an  adjustment  of  our  glasses.  Of 
Hearn  himself,  whose  eyesight  was  cruelly  handi- 
capped, it  is  said  that  his  acuteness  of  observation 
amazed  his  companions,  as  indeed  it  will  always 
astonish  his  readers.  He  was  disciplined  in  the 
two  approaches  to  his  art, —  in  the  methods  that 
older  masters  had  used,  and  in  that  keenness  of 
sight  which  is  a  skill,  as  I  said,  less  of  the  eye 
than  of  the  mind. 

Keenness  of  sight  Hearn  places  first,  as  the 
very  foundation  of  the  writer's  art.  When  we 
know  what  we  wish  to  say,  and  not  till  then,  we 
shall  know  how  to  say  it.  But  it  is  hard  indeed 
to  know  precisely  what  we  wish  to  say,  and  in  or- 
der to  secure  any  portion  of  this  knowledge  we 
must  cultivate  vision  both  outward  and  inward. 
We  may  think,  for  example,  that  we  are  familiar 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

with  the  appearance  of  our  room  at  home,  or  of 
the  street  down  which  we  daily  walk;  but  when 
we  have  occasion  to  portray  the  room  or  the  street 
from  memory,  try  as  we  will,  we  are  not  likely  to 
be  faithful  to  more  than  a  few  facts,  and  those 
facts,  perhaps,  will  not  be  the  ones  we  intended  to 
stress.  Yet  since  those  facts  are  the  one  grip 
we  have  on  reality,  we  must  train  ourselves,  by 
constant  exercise  of  the  memory  and  by  compari- 
son with  the  original,  to  see  more  facts  of  the 
same  kind,  and  to  build  up  the  picture  of  truth 
from  whatever  foundation  our  memory  thus  by 
instinct  and  training  offers  to  us.  Hearn  illus- 
trates his  point  by  the  story  of  the  Japanese  pain- 
ter who  when  he  drew  horses  always  began  at 
the  tail.  The  Westerner  would  perhaps  begin  at 
the  head,  with  some  half-realized  conviction  that 
the  head  affords  a  more  auspicious  start.  But  so 
long  as  we  begin  with  what  we  really  see,  it  makes 
no  difference  whether  head,  tail,  or  hoof  show  first 
in  the  picture.  Similarly,  we  should  cultivate  and 
cherish  clear  sight  if  we  desire  to  portray  inward 
things  —  an  emotional  experience,  for  example. 
We  must  look  at  the  emotion  until  we  have 
grasped  all  its  features.  At  our  first  attempt  to 
record  an  experience  so  common  yet  so  subtle,  we 
shall  probably  be  chagrined  to  discover  that  the 
emotion  was  vaguer  than  we  fancied,  and  we 
may  too  hastily  abandon  the  attempt  to  record  it 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

in  words.  We  should  write  it  down,  however,  as 
faithfully  as  we  can;  after  a  few  days  we  should 
reread  the  account  and  substitute  a  clearer  line 
for  whatever  seems  on  that  reading  to  be  blurred; 
after  a  few  days  more  we  should  again  reread  and 
reread  and  revise,  always  with  the  eye  on  our 
memory  of  the  experience,  to  make  sure  that  the 
portrait  Is  constantly  approaching  the  original. 
This  Is  severe  discipline,  but  no  good  work,  as 
Hearn  reminds  us,  can  be  done  without  Immense 
pains.  With  practice  the  eye  becomes  quicker 
and  more  critical,  and  therefore  fewer  revisions 
are  needed. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  picture  of  a  thing  and 
the  picture  of  an  idea,  in  order  to  Illustrate  the 
twofold  kind  of  sight  which  Hearn  would  have 
us  cultivate  as  a  first  step  toward  truth-telling  in 
art.  But  he  has  no  use  for  the  outward  vision 
without  the  Inward.  The  picture  of  the  horse, 
for  example,  would  be  meaningless  for  him  if  it 
were  merely  photographic,  if  it  left  you  In  the 
position  of  looking  at  the  horse  and  nothing  more. 
For  the  purposes  of  art,  he  reminds  us,  every  thing 
and  every  experience  should  carry  with  it  some 
emotion  peculiar  to  it  and  peculiar  to  us;  if  the 
rose  or  the  star  stirs  in  the  race  certain  feelings, 
it  should  also  produce  in  each  of  us  our  version, 
as  it  were,  of  those  feelings,  and  our  account  of 
rose  or  star,  therefore,  should  be  marked  by  some 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

emotional  accent  peculiarly  ours.  It  is  in  this 
sense  that  art  Is  a  criticism,  or  sifting,  or  Interpre- 
tation, of  life;  as  each  of  us  sincerely  reports  the 
truth,  we  indicate  at  the  same  time  our  Instinctive 
judgment  of  what  is  significant  in  it.  To  be  im- 
portant to  the  human  spirit,  any  statement  of 
truth,  thinks  Hearn,  should  be  art  —  should  con- 
tain, that  is,  the  judgment  of  the  individual  tem- 
perament upon  the  facts.  Because  he  finds  this 
value  In  the  judgment  passed  upon  the  crude  ex- 
perience, Hearn  is  careful  to  say  that  art  should 
indicate  emotion  but  not  sensation  —  a  quite  dif- 
ferent thing.  Sensation  is  feeling  without  judg- 
ment; emotion  is  the  instinctive  judgment  passed 
upon  sensation.  The  man  who  stubs  his  toe  on 
a  concealed  brick  may  have  the  emotion  of  anger, 
or  of  embarrassment,  or  of  amusement;  the  sen- 
sation In  any  case  will  have  been  the  same.  An 
attempt  to  render  the  sensation  without  the  emo- 
tion would  be  as  meaningless  as  an  attempt  to 
paint  a  horse  or  a  landscape  without  giving  any 
impression  of  pleasure  or  displeasure,  of  beauty 
or  ugliness. 

In  his  own  criticism  Hearn  left  us  many  illus- 
trations of  the  Insight  he  advocated.  One  is  the 
remarkable  lecture  on  the  value  of  the  super- 
natural in  literature,  in  which  he  tells  us  that 
what  fascinates  us  in  ghost  stories  is  the  recogni- 
tion of  emotions  we  have  had  In  dreams,  and  that 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

a  great  story  based  on  the  supernatural  must  there- 
fore follow  closely  the  essential  characteristics  of 
dream  experience.  But  what  are  those  charac- 
teristics? He  tells  us  with  extraordinary  preci- 
sion, and  identifies  them  in  well  known  tales  of 
the  supernatural.  To  be  sure,  he  draws  heavily 
upon  Herbert  Spencer  in  his  analysis  of  dream 
experience,  but  he  has  made  the  theory  his  own, 
and  he  shows  his  skill  in  observation  by  the  bril- 
liant identification  of  the  theory  with  the  exam- 
ples he  selects.  His  mind  was  trained  by  the 
philosopher;  his  eye  became  consequently  more 
keen.  A  second  illustration  of  his  insight,  and 
one  only  less  remarkable,  is  his  discussion  of  the 
Norse  sagas  and  of  Bjornson's  writing.  He  is 
making  a  contrast  between  the  literature  which 
owes  most  to  keen  outward  observation,  and  that 
which  is  inward  and  reflective ;  taking  a  hint  from 
Professor  Ker,  he  shows  how  the  Norse  writers 
give  the  incidents  of  an  episode  in  the  order  in 
which  they  presented  themselves  to  the  senses, 
and  that  the  resulting  accuracy  produces  not  only 
the  effect  of  great  realism,  but  also  paradoxically 
the  effect  of  strong  personality.  Even  when  we 
decide  to  omit  from  our  account  of  life  all  that 
is  peculiar  to  our  point  of  view,  our  opinion  as 
to  what  is  peculiar  in  our  point  of  view  will  set 
us  off  from  other  men. 

When  once  the  writer  has  seen  clearly  what  he 


XX  INTRODUCTION 

wishes  to  say,  he  has  but  to  find  the  word  for  it. 
Hearn  had  a  natural  ear  for  style  in  the  sense  of 
cadence  and  verbal  decoration,  but  he  resolutely 
set  himself  against  the  admiration  of  language  for 
language's  sake,  in  order  to  follow  consistently 
his  principle  that  the  idea  or  the  emotion  should 
come  first  and  the  word  or  the  phrase  should  adapt 
itself  to  it.  It  is  interesting  to  watch  in  the 
chapter  on  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  for  example,  how 
enthusiastic  Hearn  really  is  about  a  style  in  which 
music  for  its  own  sake  counts  as  heavily  as  words 
for  the  sake  of  precision;  he  loves  the  ground- 
swell  of  Sir  Thomas's  style,  yet  he  takes  pains 
to  warn  us  against  it,  and  against  all  seeking  after 
anything  in  language  beyond  the  faithful  service 
of  the  subject  matter.  Here  it  seems  to  me 
Hearn  is  quite  right  in  his  principle,  but  he  presses 
his  principle  somewhat  narrowly.  Granting  that 
the  word  and  the  phrase  should  faithfully  serve 
the  subject  matter,  we  may  yet  hold  that  there 
is  a  subject  matter  which  may  properly  be  served 
by  a  style  wrought  chiefly  of  verbal  music.  Not 
all  that  Sir  Thomas  Browne  had  to  convey  is 
summed  up  by  a  skeleton  outline  of  his  ideas. 
His  style  marvellously  suggests  certain  possibili- 
ties and  charms  in  his  character,  and  without  its 
eloquence  we  should  miss  the  best  part  of  his  con- 
vincing personality.  Hearn  seems  more  at  home 
with  his  principle  of  language  for  the  subject's 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

sake  when  he  discusses  individual  words.  His 
skill  in  suggesting  to  a  foreign  audience  what  is 
felt  or  half  felt  by  the  English  reader  in  such  a 
word  as  "  ghastly,"  for  example,  could  hardly 
be  bettered  by  any  criticism.  In  his  search  for 
the  right  word  he  made  himself  a  scholar  of  rare 
sensitiveness,  or  perhaps  it  would  be  better  to 
say,  a  collector  of  dehcate  connotations;  whether 
he  talks  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  writer  or 
of  the  reader,  his  discussion  of  single  words  is  a 
most  timely  inspiration  In  these  days  when  writers 
for  the  most  part  have  ceased  to  be  sensitive  to 
the  word  and  at  best  put  attention  only  on  the 
large  phrase.  Hearn  is  singularly  at  home  with 
his  principle  also  when  he  discusses  such  a  style 
as  that  of  Baudelaire.  The  difficulty  of  what  he 
accomplished  in  his  lecture  on  that  French  prose 
poet  will  be  realized  if  we  recall  that  he  was  talk- 
ing to  a  Japanese  audience  about  the  style  of  a 
French  author,  and  he  lectured  In  English.  Yet 
we  feel  In  every  paragraph,  whether  he  is  discuss- 
ing Baudelaire  or  translating  him,  some  of  that 
quality  in  the  French  master  which  he  is  trying  to 
convey. 

The  most  valuable  counsel  which  Hearn  gives 
us  in  his  discussion  of  language  is  the  doctrine 
that  every  literature  must  grow  out  of  the  vernac- 
ular. This  is  a  faith  apparently  understood  only 
by    highly    sophisticated    civilizations.     In    the 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

United  States,  for  example,  nothing  is  more  vul- 
gar at  the  present  time  than  the  half-mastered, 
but  academic,  vocabulary  used  by  the  journalist 
or  the  average  magazine  contributor  In  his  serious 
moments  —  that  is,  when  he  is  not  writing  pal- 
pable slang.  It  is  the  person  of  inadequate  read- 
ing who,  when  he  tries  to  be  dignified  or  effective, 
reaches  instinctively  for  a  conventional  vocabu- 
lary. The  really  wise  critic,  however,  has  de- 
veloped an  ear  for  those  racy  and  sincere  parts  of 
the  vocabulary  which  are  not  yet  conventional 
but  still  carry  the  smack  of  the  environment  and 
the  personality  which  produce  them.  Reading 
over  once  more  all  that  Hearn  says  of  founding  a 
national  literature  on  the  vernacular,  I  cannot  but 
think  of  books  and  articles  now  discussed  in  our 
journals  which  tell  us  that  there  is  an  American 
language  —  as  indeed  there  is  —  but  which  try 
to  prove  the  point  by  a  summary  of  American 
slang  and  American  eccentricities.  What  Hearn 
was  looking  for  in  vernacular  speech  was  the  beau- 
tiful word  and  the  precise  word.  His  doctrine 
so  understood  is  as  sound  for  us  as  it  was  for  the 
Japanese. 


INTRODUCTION  xxiii 


III 


Next  after  his  discussion  of  clearsightedness 
and  his  doctrine  of  the  vernacular  vocabulary  I 
should  put  Hearn's  constant  advice  to  young  writ- 
ers to  get  some  preliminary  skill  by  translating. 
It  should  not  escape  us  that  in  all  his  talk  of  trans- 
lation Hearn  maintains  at  one  and  the  same  time 
both  the  international  and  the  national  points  of 
view.  Translation  is  good  practise  for  the  young 
writer;  it  also  serves  to  make  nations  known  to 
each  other  and  to  spread  the  commonwealth  of 
letters.  So  much  for  the  international  point  of 
view.  The  writer,  however,  who  wishes  to  make 
known  his  own  country  abroad  should  be  as  loy- 
ally national  in  his  creative  work  as  he  is  hos- 
pitably international  in  his  translating.  The  two 
points  of  view  are  supplemerrtary.  When  we 
read  or  when  we  translate,  we  open  our  hearts  to 
news  from  other  lands  —  indeed  it  is  our  hearts 
we  open,  since  by  such  exercises  we  are  training 
our  sympathies  as  well  as  our  minds  to  feel  our 
kinship  with  the  race;  but  if  the  people  of  other 
lands  are  to  have  the  same  benefit  of  information 
when  they  translate  our  literature  into  their  lan- 
guage, we  must  take  care  that  our  writing^^will 
give  a  faithful  picture  of  our  own  life.  ^he 
kind  of  book  that,   from  this  point  of  v^ew,  is 


xxiv  INTRODUCTION 

worth  translating  is  that  which  will  give  most  in- 
formation about  the  race  which  produced  it. 
When  we  ourselves  write,  therefore,  if  we  have 
any  idea  that  our  work  is  ever  to  be  of  value  out- 
side our  own  borders,  we  should  write  of  our- 
selves, and  should  record  not  what  we  imagine 
will  concern  the  possible  foreign  reader  who  may 
translate  us,  but  what  we  know  does  concern  us. 
Hearn  was  perhaps  impelled  to  give  this  advice 
by  the  tendency  among  Japanese  writers  to  imi- 
tate Western  literature.  When  we  read  the 
translation  of  a  short  story  or  a  novel  from  Nip- 
pon, we  are  sometimes  startled  to  observe  that  we 
are  merely  meeting  one  more  Tolstoi  or  Mere- 
dith or  Maupassant,  transposed  in  manner  but 
still  essentially  European  in  spirit;  whereas  what 
we  want  is  not  a  reflection  of  the  West  but  an  in- 
forming portrait  of  the  East.  Hearn  felt  that 
Japan  would  profit  by  a  knowledge  of  western 
literature  in  translation,  but  that  her  own  litera- 
ture, if  we  are  to  profit  by  it,  should  be  racial  and 
original.  Once  more  the  advice  applies  as  well 
to  the  United  States  as  to  Japan.  At  this  mo- 
ment we  are  in  peculiar  need  of  a  contemporary 
literature  which  will  provide  information  about 
us  for  the  curiosity  of  other  nations,  yet  we  have 
few  novels  or  dramas  or  poems  which  on  reflec- 
tion we  should  care  to  distribute  as  our  authentic 
portrait.     We  have,  however,  a  number  of  well- 


INTRODUCTION  xxv 

written  books  which  reflect  Europe  and  European 
problems. 


IV 

I  have  mentioned  the  general  attitude  Heam 
took  toward  literature,  as  an  emotional  art,  as  a 
moral  art,  and  as  a  discipline,  and  I  have  indi- 
cated his  emphasis  upon  clear  vision  as  the  key 
to  expression,  his  fear  of  style  for  its  own  sake, 
his  love  of  the  right  word  and  of  the  vernacular, 
the  value  he  set  on  translation  both  as  literary 
exercise  and  as  international  propaganda,  and  his 
insistence  upon  nationalism  in  creative  writing. 
In  his  discussion  of  these  points  the  reader  will 
observe  that  he  was,  as  he  said,  a  workman  talk- 
ing of  his  craft.  Such  talk  is  for  me,  at  least, 
the  most  precious  kind  of  criticism.  The  poet 
gives  us  his  observations,  his  insights,  of  the  ex- 
perience of  life;  the  critic  in  turn  gives  us  his 
observations  of  the  experience  of  poetry.  It  is 
the  same  art  of  seeing  clearly  and  reporting  cor- 
rectly. The  critic's  insight,  however,  gains  im- 
mensely from  the  fact  that  what  he  talks  about 
he  has  himself  often  done.  If  there  is,  unfortu- 
nately, no  magic  by  which  a  Lafcadio  Hearn  can 
teach  us  to  write  with  his  own  skill,  at  least  in  his 
talk  of  his  beloved  art  there  is  a  kindling  elo- 


xxvi  INTRODUCTION 

quence  that  rouses  in  us  something  of  his  own  de- 
sire to  see  the  beauty  of  life  and  to  tell  the  truth 
about  it. 


TALKS  TO  WRITERS 


^•t 


TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

CHAPTER  I 

ON  THE  RELATION  OF  LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  TO 

LITERATURE 


The  three  main  divisions  of  literature  are 
poetry,  drama  and  fiction.  I  want  to  speak  of 
these  in  relation  to  the  lives  of  the  men  who  en- 
gage in  their  production.  That  is  what  is  meant 
by  the  title  of  the  essay.  This  is  a  very  import- 
ant subject  for  every  student  of  literature  to  con- 
sider. Any  one  wishing  to  become  an  author  in 
any  one  of  the  three  branches  of  literature  that  I 
have  mentioned,  must  ask  himself  honestly  sev- 
eral questions  and  be  able  to  answer  them  in  the 
affirmative.  If  he  cannot  answer  them  in  the 
affirmative,  he  had  better  leave  literature  alone  — 
for  the  time  being  at  least. 

The  first  question  is,  Have  I  creative  power? 
That  is  to  say.  Am  I  able  to  produce  either  poetry, 
or  fiction,  or  drama,  by  my  own  experience,  out 
of  my  own  mental  operation,  without  following 
the  ideas  of  other  people,   or  being  influenced. 


^:  .   .. ...... .TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

consciously  or  unconsciously,  only  by  the  opinions 
of  others.  If  you  cannot  answer  this  question 
with  an  honest  "  Yes,"  then  you  can  only  be  an 
imitator. 

But  suppose  that  you  can  answer  this  first  ques- 
tion in  the  affirmative,  there  remains  another  ques- 
tion almost  equally  important  to  ask.  It  is  this: 
Can  I  devote  my  life  —  or  at  least  the  best  part 
of  my  leisure  time  —  to  literary  work?  If  you 
cannot  be  sure  of  much  time  to  spare,  you  should 
be  sure,  at  least,  of  being  able  to  give,  every  day 
of  your  existence,  a  short  time  to  one  sustained 
object.  If  you  are  not  sure  of  being  able  to  do 
this,  you  will  find  the  way  of  literature  very  hard 
indeed. 

But  there  is  yet  a  third  question  to  be  asked. 
Even  if  you  have  the  power  and  the  time,  it  is 
necessary  that  you  should  determine  this  matter: 
Must  I  mingle  with  society  and  take  my  part  in 
everyday  life,  or  should  I  seek  quiet  and  isolation? 
The  third  question  can  be  answered  only  accord- 
ing to  the  character  of  your  particular  literary 
power.  Certain  kinds  of  literature  require  soli- 
tude —  cannot  be  produced  without  it.  Other 
kinds  of  literature  oblige  the  author,  whether  he 
likes  or  does  not  like  it,  to  mix  a  great  deal  with 
people,  to  observe  all  their  actions,  and  to  fill 
himself  with  every  possible  experience  of  active 
life. 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  3 

I  think  now  the  ground  is  swept.     We  can  be- 
gin the  second  section  of  the  lecture. 


II 

What  I  have  suggested  in  the  above  series  of 
questions,  must  now  be  dwelt  upon  in  detail.  Let 
us  first  consider  poetry  in  its  relation  to  the  con- 
duct of  life. 

Poetry  is  not  one  of  those  forms  of  literature 
which  require  that  the  author  shall  mix  a  great 
deal  with  active  life.  On  the  contrary,  poetry  is 
especially  the  art  of  solitude.  Poetry  requires  a 
great  deal  of  time,  a  great  deal  of  thought,  a  great 
deal  of  silent  work,  and  all  the  sincerity  of  which 
a  man's  nature  is  capable.  The  less  that  a  real 
poet  mingles  with  social  life,  the  better  for  his 
art.  This  is  a  well  known  fact  in  all  countries. 
It  is  so  well  known  that  if  a  young  poet  allows 
himself  to  be  flattered  and  petted  and  made  much 
of  by  the  rich  and  mighty,  it  is  commonly  said 
that  he  is  going  to  be  ruined.  One  cannot  be 
perfectly  sincere  to  oneself  and  become  an  object 
of  fashionable  attention.  It  is  utterly  impossible. 
The  art  of  poetry  requires  that  the  poet  be  as  soli- 
tary in  his  house  as  a  priest.  I  do  not  mean  that 
it  should  be  necessary  to  be  an  ascetic,  or  any- 
thing of  that  kind,  nor  that  he  should  not  be 


4  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

troubled  with  family  cares.  It  is  very  necessary 
that  he  should  have  a  family,  and  know  all  that 
the  family  means,  in  order  to  be  a  good  poet. 
But  he  must  certainly  renounce  what  are  gener- 
ally called  social  pleasures.  In  the  same  degree 
that  he  fails  to  do  this,  he  is  almost  certain  to  fail 
in  his  poetry. 

Let  us  here  consider  a  few  extraordinary  facts 
about  the  poetical  life.  Of  course  you  know  that 
poetry  does  not  mean  merely  writing  verses,  no 
matter  how  correct  the  verses  may  be.  It  means 
the  power  to  move  men's  hearts  and  minds  by 
verse.  Now  a  Persian  poet  once  observed  that 
no  bad  man  could  possibly  become  a  poet.  There 
is  a  good  deal  of  truth  in  that  statement,  not- 
withstanding some  apparent  exceptions.  You 
have  doubtless  read  that  many  European  poets 
were  bad  men.  But  you  must  take  such  state- 
ments with  a  great  deal  of  reserve  and  qualifica- 
tion. I  imagine,  for  example,  that  you  will  im- 
mediately think  of  Byron.  But  Byron  was  not 
fairly  judged;  and  you  must  not  allow  yourselves 
to  accept  any  mere  religious  or  social  declara- 
tion about  the  character  of  the  poet.  The  real 
facts  are  that  Byron  was  unjustly  treated  and 
goaded  and  irritated  into  immoral  courses. 
Moreover,  the  deeper  nature  of  Byron  was  essen- 
tially generous  and  sympathetic,  and  when  he  fol- 
lows the  inspiration  of  his  deeper  nature,  he  gives 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  5 

us  the  best  of  what  he  has.  I  might  speak  of 
many  other  poets ;  you  will  always  find  that  there 
was  something  good  and  generous  in  the  man, 
however  great  his  faults  may  have  appeared  on 
the  surface.  Indeed,  I  knew  only  one  or  two  ex- 
ceptions to  this  Persian  observation  that  no  bad 
man  can  be  a  poet,  and  these  exceptions  are  not 
satisfactory.  We  find  in  the  time  of  the  Italian 
renaissance  a  few  extraordinarily  wicked  men  who 
made  a  reputation  as  poets.-  I  might  mention  for 
example  the  name  of  Malatesta.  But  when  we 
come  to  examine  the  literary  work  of  this  cruel 
and  ferocious  man,  we  find  that  its  only  merit  is 
the  perfect  correctness  of  the  verse.  Perfectly 
correct  verse  was  greatly  esteemed  in  that  age; 
but  we  are  much  wiser  today.  We  now  know 
that  no  mere  correctness  qualifies  verse  as  true 
poetry;  and  I  do  not  think  that  the  Persian  poet 
would  have  found  any  poetry  in  the  love  verses  of 
the  wicked  Malatesta. 

Of  course  when  the  Persian  poet  spoke  of  a 
bad  man,  he  meant  what  is  bad  according  to  the 
consensus  of  human  experience.  I  should  not  call 
a  man  bad  only  because  he  happened  to  offend 
against  particular  conventions.  I  should  call  a 
man  bad  only  in  so  far  as  his  relation  to  others 
proves  him  to  be  cruel,  unfeeling,  selfish,  and  un- 
grateful.    No  such  man  as  that  can  write  poetry. 

So  the  fundamental  truth  of  this  whole  matter 


6  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

is  simply  that  a  poet  must  be  born  a  poet  —  as 
the  Enghsh  proverb  says,  "  A  poet  is  born,  not 
made."  No  amount  of  education  will  make  a 
man  a  poet.  Every  year  in  England  two  great 
universities  turn  out  about  four  thousand  good 
men  stuffed  with  all  that  systematic  education 
can  force  Into  them.  German  universities  can 
do  better  than  that.  French  universities  do  quite 
as  well.  But  out  of  these  thousands  and  thou- 
sands, how  many  can  become  poets?  Not  half  a 
dozen  in  all  the  countries  of  Europe  together. 
Education  will  help  a  poet;  It  will  greatly  enrich 
his  powers  of  language;  it  will  train  his  ear  to  the 
charm  of  musical  sound,  and  train  his  brain  to 
perceive  all  possible  laws  of  proportion  and  taste 
in  form.  But  it  cannot  make  him  a  poet.  I  sup- 
pose there  are  today  in  England  alone  at  least 
thirty  thousand  people  capable  of  writing  almost 
any  form  of  correct  verse.  Yet  perhaps  not 
even  two  of  them  are  poets;  for  poetry  is  a 
question  of  character  and  temperament.  One 
must  be  born  with  a  love  of  the  beautiful,  with 
great  capacities  for  sympathy,  with  a  certain  gen- 
tleness of  disposition,  in  order  to  be  able  to  act 
upon  the  feelings  of  men  through  literature. 
The  qualities  that  make  the  poet  belong  to  the 
softer  side  of  human  nature  —  hence  the  proverb 
that  the  poet  Is  a  man  who  Is  half  a  woman.  I 
think  that  you  have  all  observed  that  certain  ad- 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  7 

mirable  but  hard  kinds  of  mind  are  almost  in- 
sensible to  sentiment  in  literature.     As  a  general 
rule  —  though   exceptions  have   existed  —  math- 
ematicians cannot  be  poets;  the  great  Goethe,  dis- 
tinguished as  he  was  In  science  by  reason  of  his 
constructive  imagination,  was  singularly  deficient 
in  mathematical  capacity!     It  would  appear  that 
certain  powers  of  the  mind  cannot  be  cultivated 
except  at  the  expense  of  other  faculties.     Every- 
where poets  have  been  recognized  as  more  or  less 
unpractical  in  active  life;  they  rarely  make  good 
business  men;  they  never  can  do  certain  things  re- 
quiring   insensiblhty    to    the    feelings    of    others. 
Essentially  sympathetic,  their  conduct  Is  ruled  in 
all  things  by  feelings  rather  than  by  cold  reason, 
and  that  Is  why  they  very  often  make  such  unfor- 
tunate mistakes.     But  they  should  be  thought  of 
as  representing  In  the  highest  degree  what  is  emo- 
tional in  man.     If  the  whole  world  were  governed 
by  hard  and  fast  rules,  it  would  become  very  much 
more  difficult  to  live  in  than  it  now  is  because  of 
the  poets  who  help  to  keep  alive  the  more  gen- 
erous Impulses  of  human  nature.     That  Is  why 
they  have  been  called  priests. 

I  do  not  think  that  in  Japan  the  most  difficult 
form  of  sustained  emotional  effort  has  ever  been, 
comparable  to  the  art  of  poetry  In  Western  coun- 
tries.  It  Is,  indeed,  such  a  difficult  thing,  to  com- 
pare the  achievements  of  two  countries,  that  if  I 


8  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

were  speaking  only  of  poetry  as  embodied  in 
verse,  I  think  that  you  would  find  my  remarks 
decidedly  extravagant.  But  poetry  is  not  con- 
fined to  forms  of  verse.  There  may  be  poetry 
in  beautiful  prose;  and  some  of  the  very  best 
English  literature  deserves  to  be  qualified  as 
prose-poetry,  because  It  produces  the  emotional 
effect  of  verse.  Now  any  form  of  literature  that 
really  does  this  requires  all  the  time  and  all  the 
power  that  the  writer  can  spare.  And  It  Is  for 
this  reason  that  the  life  of  the  man  who  writes 
it  must  be  solitary  —  a  life  of  devotion  to  art. 


Ill 

Let  us  now  turn  to  fiction  —  excluding  the 
variety  of  It  which  might  be  termed  prose-poetry. 
Fiction  should  be.  In  these  times,  the  Mirror  of 
Life.  What  is  a  man  to  do  who  would  devote 
his  time  and  life  In  this  direction?  We  must  stop 
and  qualify. 

Although  there  are  nominally  so  many  different 
schools  of  European  fiction  —  Classical,  Roman- 
tic, Realistic,  Naturalistic,  Psychological,  Prob- 
lematical, etc.,  etc.,  —  we  need  not  bother  our- 
selves with  this  variety  of  distinctions,  but  simply 
divide  fiction  into  two  classes  —  subjective  and 
objective.     Fiction  Is  either  a  picture  of  things 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  9 

imagined,  or  a  picture  of  things  actually  seen. 
Can  we  make  a  preference?  From  the  artistic 
point  of  view  I  am  not  sure  that  we  can;  for,  con- 
trary to  what  vulgar  public  opinion  believes,  the 
greatest  works  of  fiction  and  drama  have  really 
been  subjective,  not  objective.  I  need  not  remind 
you  that  Shakespeare  did  not  see  and  did  not  ex- 
perience the  incidents  of  his  astonishing  plays,  and 
I  need  not  remind  you  that  the  great  Greek  dram- 
atists did  not  see  the  facts  of  tragedy  which  they 
put  upon  the  stage  and  which  powerfully  move 
our  hearts.  This  is  an  astonishing  fact,  that  the 
mind  should  perceive  more  clearly  than  the  eyes 
—  but  it  Is  only  when  the  mind  Is  that  of  a  genius. 
From  the  artistic  standpoint  we  cannot,  neverthe- 
less, dare  to  say  that  one  method  of  literature  is 
necessarily  better  than  the  other,  merely  because 
the  greatest  work  happens  to  have  been  done  by 
that  method.  In  some  future  time  we  might  find  ^  f^ 
an  objective  method  made  equally  great.  And 
from  the  individual  point  of  view,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  young  author,  the  young  student, 
a  preference  Is  absolutely  necessary.  It  Is  all- 
important  that  he  should  discover  In  what  direc- 
tion his  literary  strength  Is  growing.  If  he  feels 
that  he  can  do  better  by  Imagination  than  by  ob- 
servation, then  let  him  by  all  means  cultivate 
romantic  work.  But  if  he  feels  sure  that  he  can 
do   better  by   using   his   senses  —  by    observing, 


lo  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

comparing  —  then  he  must,  as  a  duty  to  himself, 
adopt  a  realistic  method.  And  the  conduct  of 
his  life  in  relation  to  literature  must  be  decided 
according  to  which  path  he  decides  to  take. 

As  I  told  you,  the  highest  forms  of  fiction 
and  drama  have  been  the  work  of  intuition,  of 
imagination.  Thackeray,  for  example,  no  more 
than  Shakespeare  actually  saw  or  experienced 
what  he  put  into  his  novels.  Yet  those  novels 
much  surpassed  the  novels  of  Miss  Bronte,  who 
only  wrote  what  she  heard  and  saw  and  felt.  If 
you  did  not  know  the  real  facts  of  the  case,  you 
would  think  that  Thackeray  was  more  realistic 
than  Miss  Bronte.  Great  imaginative  work  is 
more  realistic  than  reahty  itself,  more  ap- 
parently objective  than  the  result  of  objective 
study.  But  as  I  reminded  you,  it  is  only 
a  genius  who  can  reach  this  sort  of  realism 
through  intuition.  However,  there  are  minor  de- 
grees of  genius.  You  must  have  noticed  some 
of  these  among  yourselves.  In  any  gathering 
of  students  there  are  always  a  few  remarkable 
persons  in  whom  the  other  students  are  will- 
ing to  put  their  trust  whenever  any  emergency 
arises.  Suppose  a  thousand  students  are  in  a 
difficult  position  of  some  kind  or  anxious  about 
something;  presently  out  of  that  thousand,  lead- 
ers or  guides  or  advisors  would  come  forward. 
It    is    not    necessary    at    all    that    they    should 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  ii 

be  particularly  strong  or  formidable  persons; 
what  is  wanted  in  a  time  of  embarrassment  or 
danger  Is  a  good  head,  not  a  strong  arm.  You 
instinctively  know,  I  presume,  that  he  who  has  the 
best  head  among  you  is  not  necessarily  the  best 
scholar.  It  Is  not  scholarship  that  is  needed  for 
difficult  circumstances;  it  is  what  we  call  ^'  mother- 
wit,"  strong  common  sense,  that  is  what  we  com- 
monly mean  In  England  by  ''  a  good  head." 
Persons  of  this  kind  do  not  often  make  mistakes. 
Notice  how  they  act  when  they  come  in  contact 
with  strangers  —  they  remain  quite  at  ease,  unem- 
barrassed, and  they  know  what  to  do  and  what  to 
say  on  meeting  extraordinary  persons  or  extra- 
ordinary events.  Now  what  is  this  power,  this 
"  mother-wit  "?  It  is  a  kind  of  strong  intuition. 
It  is  the  best  of  all  wits  that  a  man  can  be  born  to. 
If  a  man  have  this  gift  in  a  very  great  degree, 
and  if  he  happen  at  the  same  time  to  have  a  love 
of  literature,  he  can  be  a  great  dramatist  or  a 
great  novelist.  There  Is  the  real  subjective 
worker.  He  has  no  difficulty  in  creating  imagi- 
nary persons,  and  making  them  perform  their 
parts;  he  has  been  born  with  the  knowledge  of 
what  most  kinds  of  men  and  women  would  do 
under  certain  circumstances.  But  a  high  degree 
of  genius  is  not  often  found  in  this  direction;  all 
that  I  want  you  to  bear  clearly  in  mind,  is  that 
for  subjective  work,  imaginative  work,  you  must 


12  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

know  yourselves  to  possess  a  certain  amount  of 
this  intuition.  Unless  you  have  it,  it  were  better 
to  work  in  other  directions. 

The  dramatic  faculty,  this  true  creative  power 
of  which  I  am  speaking,  is  always  rare  in  the 
highest  degree.  When  we  find  it  at  all  in  these 
days,  we  find  it  only  in  minor  degrees.  Very 
possibly  it  exists  in  varying  states  in  minds  that 
never  cultivate  it  —  not  at  least  in  a  literary  di- 
rection. For  men  having  this  power  now-a-days 
are  likely  to  use  their  constructive  imagination  in 
directions  which  assure  material  success  much 
more  certainly  than  literature  can  ever  do.  They 
may  become  diplomatists,  or  great  men  of  busi- 
ness, or  bankers,  or  political  leaders;  their  knowl- 
edge of  human  nature  and  their  intuition  of  hu- 
man motives  can  help  them  equally  well  in  many 
other  directions  besides  literature,  and  in  most 
directions  vastly  better.  This  is  a  very  different 
kind  of  character  from  the  character  of  the  emo- 
tional poet.  It  is  much  more  varied,  and  it  is 
much  stronger.  To  speak  of  any  rules  for  the 
conduct  of  literary  life  in  the  case  of  such  men  is 
useless.  They  need  no  counsel.  They  do  very 
much  as  they  please,  and  obstacles  never  dis- 
hearten them.  It  is  worth  noting,  however,  that 
they  generally  take  an  active  part  in  social  life; 
it  is  more  interesting  for  them  than  a  play;  it 
furnishes  them  with  continual  motives  of  inspira- 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  13 

tion;  and  It  has  no  terror  for  them  of  any  kind. 
They  are  like  strong  swimmers  accustomed  to 
surf.  I  suppose  you  know  that  while  almost 
everybody  knows  how  to  swim  more  or  less,  surf- 
swimmers  are  not  very  common.  In  Amerita 
or  other  countries  good  surf-swimmers  get  high 
wages  in  the  Government  life-saving  service;  one 
must  not  only  have  learned  from  childhood,  but 
must  have  great  natural  strength  and  skill.  Now 
in  the  great  sea  of  social  life,  where  clumsy  peo- 
ple are  so  easily  drowned,  the  character  of  which 
I  speak  Is  like  that  of  a  strong  surf-swimmer. 
He  has  nothing  to  fear  from  breakers.  Observe 
also  that  men  of  this  class,  as  the  history  of 
English  literature  especially  shows,  always  find 
time  to  do  what  they  want,  and  do  not  trouble 
themselves  much  about  the  "  wear  and  tear  "  of 
social  duty.  Take,  for  example,  the  history  of 
Victorian  literature.  Only  one  of  the  four  great 
Victorian  poets  possessed  the  dramatic  faculty  in 
a  high  degree  —  Robert  Browning.  Tennyson, 
Rossetti,  and  Swinburne  led  lives  of  solitude  and 
meditation ;  Browning  on  the  other  hand  was  con- 
stantly in  society,  studying  human  nature  as  well 
as  obtaining  enjoyment  from  social  experience. 
Or  take  again  the  prose-writers.  The  great  ro- 
mantic novelists  were  all  solitary  men;  the  great 
dramatic  novelists  were  essentially  social  men. 
Thackeray,  for  Instance,  was  especially  a  man  of 


14  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

society.  Or  to  take  a  still  later  example,  Mere- 
dith, the  greatest  of  English  psychological  novel- 
ists, Is  of  course  a  social  figure.  It  was  In  the  life 
of  the  upper  classes  that  he  found  the  substance 
of  his  extraordinary  novels.  Not  to  multiply  ex- 
amples, which  would  require  too  much  time,  It 
may  be  said  that  as  a  general  rule,  solitude  Is  of 
no  use  to  men  of  .creative  genius. 


IV 

I  think  I  have  shown  you,  or  suggested  to  you, 
that  two  great  departments  of  literature  —  the 
emotional,  as  represented  especially  by  poetry; 
and  the  creative,  as  especially  represented  by 
drama  or  the  dramatic  novels  —  depend  alto- 
gether upon  character,  upon  Inheritance.  You 
cannot  make  a  great  poet  or  a  great  dramatist  by 
education,  though  education  may  help.  And  you 
have  seen  that  the  two  kinds  of  character  belong- 
ing respectively  to  romantic  literature  and  to 
realistic  literature  are  almost  exactly  opposed  to 
each  other.  Both  are  rare.  It  Is  not  likely  In 
these  days  that  many  among  us  can  hope  to  be- 
long to  either  class.  We  generally  know  whether 
we  belong  to  one  or  the  other  of  them  at  an 
early  period  of  life.  The  extraordinary  facul- 
ties usually,  though  not  always,  manifest  them- 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  15 

selves  in  youth.  It  is  true  that,  very  rarely,  a 
great  talent  only  develops  about  middle  age  — 
this  occurring  chiefly  in  the  case  of  prose-writers. 
But  unless  we  have  the  very  best  of  reasons  to  be- 
lieve ourselves  born  to  great  things  in  literature, 
it  is  much  better  not  to  imagine  that  we  have  any 
special  mission.  Most  students  of  literature  are 
more  likely  to  belong  to  the  third  class  than  to 
either  of  the  classes  preceding,  and  it  is  of  the 
third  class  especially  that  something  useful  may 
be  said. 

The  ordinary  class  of  literary  men  must  de- 
pend chiefly  upon  observation  and  constant  prac- 
tice. They  cannot  hope  for  sudden  inspiration  or 
for  extraordinary  intuition.  They  must  find 
truth  and  beauty  by  painfully  searching  for  them; 
and  they  can  learn  how  to  express  what  they  see 
and  feel  only  by  years  of  study  and  application. 
Education  for  these  is  almost,  though  not  abso- 
lutely, indispensable.  I  say  "  not  absolutely,"  be- 
cause self-training  can  sometimes  supply  all,  and 
more,  that  the  ordinary  education  is  capable  of 
giving.  But  as  a  rule  to  which  the  exceptions 
are  few,  the  ordinary  student  must  depend  upon 
his  college  training.  Without  it,  it  is  very  likely 
that  he  will  always  remain  in  his  work  what  we 
call  in  literature  "  provincial."  Provincialism  as 
a  literary  term  does  not  mean  a  country  tone,  a 
rustic   clumsiness   of   thinking   and   speaking;    it 


1 6  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

means  a  strong  tendency  to  the  commonplace,  an 
inclination  to  dwell  upon  things  universally  known 
as  if  they  were  new  discoveries;  and  it  also  means 
the  habit  of  allowing  oneself  to  be  so  unduly  in- 
fluenced by  some  one  book  or  another,  or  by  one 
class  of  ideas,  that  any  well-educated  reader  rec- 
ognizes at  once  the  source  of  every  idea  expressed. 
This  is  provincialism.  The  great  danger  in  self- 
education  is  that  it  leaves  a  man  all  his  life  in  the 
provincial  stage,  unless  he  happens  to  have  ex- 
traordinary chances,  extraordinary  tastes,  and 
very  much  time  to  cultivate  both. 

The  most  important  thing  for  the  literary  stu- 
dent, with  a  university  training,  to  do  at  the  be- 
ginning of  a  literary  career,  is  to  find  out  as  soon 
as  possible  in  what  direction  his  intellectual 
strength  chiefly  lies.  It  may  take  years  to  find 
this  out;  but  until  it  is  found  out  he  is  scarcely 
likely  to  do  anything  great.  Where  absolute 
genius  does  not  exist,  literature  must  depend  upon 
the  cultivation  of  a  man's  best  faculties  in  a  single 
direction.  To  attempt  work  in  a  number  of  di- 
rections is  always  hazardous,  and  seldom  gives 
good  results.  Every  literary  man  has  to  arrive  at 
this  conclusion.  It  is  true  that  you  find  in  foreign 
literature  cases  of  men  not  absolute  geniuses,  who 
have  done  well  both  in  poetry  and  in  prose,  or  in 
prose-fiction  and  in  drama  —  that  is,  in  appar- 
ently two  directions.     I  should  not  instance  Vic- 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  17 

tor  Hugo;  his  is  a  case  of  pure  genius;  but  I 
should  take  such  examples  as  Meredith  in  Eng- 
land, or  Bjornson  in  Norway,  as  better  illustrat- 
ing what  I  wish  to  say.  You  must  remember  that 
in  cases  like  these  the  two  different  kinds  of  litera- 
ture produced  are  really  very  close  to  each  other, 
so  close  that  one  absolutely  grows  out  of  the 
other.  For  example,  the  great  Norwegian  dram- 
atist began  as  a  writer  of  stories  and  novels,  all 
of  which  were  intensely  dramatic  in  form.  From 
the  dramatic  novel  to  the  play  is  but  a  short  step. 
Or  in  the  case  of  the  English  novelist  and  poet, 
we  really  find  illustrations  of  only  one  and  the 
same  faculty  both  in  his  poetry  and  in  his  prose. 
The  novels  in  one  case  are  essentially  psycholog- 
ical novels;  the  poetry  is  essentially  psychological 
poetry.  Again  Browning's  plays  are  scarcely 
more  than  the  development  in  dramatic  form  of 
the  ideas  to  be  found  in  the  dramatic  poems.  Or 
take  the  case  of  Kingsley  —  essentially  a  roman- 
tic—  romantic  of  the  very  first  class.  He  was 
great  in  poetry  and  great  in  prose;  but  there  is 
an  extraordinary  resemblance  between  the  poetry 
and  the  prose  in  his  case,  and  he  was  wise  enough 
to  write  very  little  poetry,  for  he  knew  where  his 
chief  strength  lay.  If  you  want  to  see  and  judge 
for  yourself,  observe  the  verse  of  Kingsley's  poem 
on  *'  Edith  of  the  Swan-Neck,"  and  then  read  a 
page  or  two  of  the  romance  of  "  Hereward."     I 


1 8  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

could  give  you  fifty  examples  of  the  same  kind  in 
English  literature.  Men  have  succeeded  in  two 
directions  only  when  one  of  these  naturally  led 
into  the  other.  But  no  student  should  make  the 
serious  mistake  —  a  mistake  which  hundreds  of 
trained  English  men  of  letters  are  making  today 
—  of  trying  to  write  in  two  entirely  different  and 
opposed  directions  —  for  example,  in  romantic 
poetry  and  realistic  prose.  It  is  very  necessary 
to  know  in  which  way  your  tastes  should  be  culti- 
vated, in  which  way  you  are  most  strong.  Me- 
diocrity is  the  certain  result  of  not  knowing.  For 
after  all,  this  last  class  of  literature,  like  every 
other,  depends  for  success  upon  character  —  upon 
inborn  conditions,  upon  inheritance  of  tastes  and 
feelings  and  tendencies.  Once  that  you  know 
these,  the  way  becomes  plain,  though  not  smooth; 
everything  thereafter  depends  upon  hard  work, 
constant  effort. 

Should  one  seek  or  avoid  solitude  in  the  pur- 
suance of  this  ordinary  class  of  literary  aims? 
That  again  depends  upon  character.  It  is  first 
necessary  to  know  your  strength,  to  decide  upon 
the  direction  to  take;  these  things  having  been  set- 
tled, you  must  know  whether  you  have  to  depend 
upon  feeling  and  imagination  as  well  as  upon  ob- 
servation, or  upon  observation  only.  Your  nat- 
ural disposition  will  then  instruct  you.  If  you 
find  that  you  can  work  best  in  solitude,  it  is  a  duty 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  19 

both  to  yourself  and  to  literature  to  deny  your- 
self social  engagements  that  may  interfere  with 
the  production  of  good  work. 

All  this  leads  to  the  subject  of  an  extraordinary 
difficulty  in  the  way  of  any  new  Japanese  litera- 
ture, a  difficulty  about  which  I  wanted  to  talk  to 
you  from  the  first.  I  think  you  know  that  leisure 
is  essential  to  the  production  of  any  art  in  any 
country  —  that  is,  any  national  art.  I  am  not 
speaking  of  those  extraordinary  exceptions  fur- 
nished by  men  able  to  produce  wonderful  things 
under  any  circumstances.  Such  exceptional  men 
do  not  make  national  art;  they  produce  a  few 
inimitable  works  of  genius.  An  art  grows  into 
existence  out  of  the  slow  labour  and  thought  and 
feelings  of  thousands.  In  that  sense,  leisure  is 
absolutely  necessary  to  art.  Need  I  remind  you 
that  every  Japanese  art  has  been  the  result  of 
generations  of  leisurely  life?  Those  who  made 
the  now  famous  arts  of  Japan  —  literature  as 
well  as  ceramics  or  painting  or  metal  work  — 
were  not  men  who  did  their  work  in  a  hurry. 
Nobody  was  in  a  hurry  in  ancient  times.  Those 
elaborate  ceremonies,  now  known  as  tea-cere- 
monies, indicate  the  life  of  a  very  leisurely  and 
very  aesthetic  period.  I  mention  that  as  one 
illustration  of  many  things.  Today,  although 
some  people  try  to  insist  that  the  arts  of  Japan 
are  as  flourishing  as  ever,  the  best  judges  frankly 


ao  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

declare  that  the  old  arts  are  being  destroyed.  It 
is  not  only  foreign  influence  in  the  shape  of  bad 
taste  that  is  destroying  them;  it  is  the  want  of 
leisure.  Every  year  the  time  formerly  allowed 
for  pleasure  of  any  kind  is  becoming  more  and 
more  curtailed.  None  of  you  who  are  here 
listening  to  me  can  fail  to  remember  a  period 
when  people  had  much  more  time  than  they  have 
now.  And  none  of  you  will  fail  to  see  a  period 
in  which  the  want  of  time  will  become  much  more 
painful,  much  more  terrible  than  at  present.  For 
your  civilization  is  gradually  but  surely  taking  an 
industrial  character;  and  in  the  time  when  it  shall 
have  become  almost  purely  industrial  there  will 
be  very  little  leisure  indeed.  Very  possibly  you 
are  thinking  that  England,  Germany,  and  France 
are  essentially  industrial  countries  —  though  able 
to  produce  so  much  art.  But  the  conditions  are 
not  the  same.  Industrialism  in  other  countries 
has  not  rendered  impossible  the  formation  of 
wealthy  leisure  classes;  those  leisure  classes  still 
exist,  and  they  have  rendered  possible,  especially 
in  England,  the  production  of  great  literature. 
A  very  long  time  indeed  must  elapse  before  Japan 
can  present  an  analogous  condition. 

The  want  of  time  you  will  feel  every  year  more 
and  more.  And  there  are  other  and  more  seri- 
ous difficulties  to  think  about.  Every  few  years 
young  Japanese  scholars  who  have  been  trained 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  21 

abroad  In  the  universities  of  Europe  —  who  have 
been  greatly  praised  there,  and  who  show  every 
promise  —  return  to  Japan.  After  their  return, 
what  a  burden  of  obhgations  is  thrust  upon  their 
shoulders !  They  have,  to  begin  with,  to  assume 
the  cares  of  a  family;  they  have  to  become  public 
officers,  and  to  perform  official  duty  for  a  much 
greater  number  of  hours  than  would  be  asked  of 
men  in  similar  positions  abroad;  and  under  no 
circumstances  can  they  hope  for  that  right  to  dis- 
pose of  their  own  time  which  is  allowed  to  pro- 
fessors in  foreign  countries.  No;  they  must  at 
once  accept  onerous  positions  which  involve  hun- 
dreds of  duties  and  which  are  very  likely  to  keep 
a  man  occupied  on  many  days  of  the  year  from 
sunrise  until  a  late  hour  of  the  night.  Even  what 
are  thought  and  what  used  really  to  be  pleasur- 
able occasions,  have  ceased  to  be  pleasing;  time  is 
lacking  for  the  pleasure,  but  the  fatigue  and  the 
pain  remain.  I  need  not  particularize  how  many 
festivals,  banquets,  public  and  private  celebra- 
tions, any  public  official  Is  obliged  to  attend.  At 
present  this  cannot  be  helped.  It  is  the  struggle 
between  the  old  state  and  the  new;  and  the  re- 
adjustment will  take  many  years  to  effect.  But 
is  it  any  wonder  that  these  scholars  do  not  pro- 
duce great  things  in  literature?  It  is  common  for 
foreigners  to  say  that  the  best  Japanese  scholars 
do  not  seem  to  do  anything  after  they  return  to 


22  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

Japan.  The  fact  is  that  they  do  too  much,  but 
not  of  the  kind  that  leaves  a  permanent  work. 

Most  of  you,  whether  rich  or  otherwise,  will  be 
asked  after  your  university  life  is  over  to  do  a 
great  deal  too  much.  I  imagine  that  most  of  you 
will  have  to  do  the  work  of  at  least  three  men. 
Trained  teachers,  trained  officers,  trained  men  of 
any  kind,  are  still  rare.  There  are  not  enough 
of  them;  there  is  too  much  to  do,  and  too  few 
men  to  do  it.  And  in  the  face  of  these  unques- 
tionable facts,  how  can  you  hope  to  produce  any 
literature?  Assuredly  It  Is  very  discouraging. 
It  could  not  be  more  discouraging. 

There  is  an  old  English  proverb  that  seems 
opportune  In  this  connection : 

For  every  trouble  under  the  sun 
There  is  a  remedy,  or  there  Is  none. 
If  there  is  one,  try  to  find  it; 
If  there  be  none,  never  mind  it. 

I  think  you  will  agree  with  me  that  the  remedy 
is  for  the  moment  out  of  the  question;  and  our 
duty  is  to  "  never  mind  It,"  as  the  proverb  says. 
Discouraging  for  literature  though  the  prospect 
seems,  I  think  that  strong  minds  should  not  be 
frightened  by  it,  but  should  try  to  discover 
whether  modern  English  literature  does  not  offer 
us  some  guiding  examples  in  this  relation.  It  cer- 
tainly does.     A  great  deal  of  excellent  English 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  23 

literature  belonging  to  that  third  class  which  I 
have  specified,  has  been  created  under  just  the 
same  kind  of  disheartening  circumstances.  Great 
poetry  has  not  been  written  under  these  conditions 
—  that  requires  solitude.  Great  drama  and 
great  dramatic  novels  have  never  been  produced 
under  such  conditions.  But  the  literature  of  the 
essay,  which  is  very  important;  the  great  litera- 
ture of  short  stories;  and  a  great  deal  of  thought- 
ful work  of  the  systematic  order,  such  as  historical 
or  social  or  critical  studies,  —  all  this  has  been 
done  very  successfully  by  men  who  have  had  no 
time  to  call  their  own  during  sunlight.  The  lit- 
erature of  observation  and  experience,  and  the 
literature  of  patient  research,  do  not  require  days 
of  thought  and  leisure.  Much  of  such  work  has 
been  produced,  for  many  generations  In  England,. 
a  little  at  a  time,  every  night,  before  going  to 
bed.  For  example,  there  is  an  emment  English- 
man of  letters  named  Morley  of  whom  you  have 
doubtless  heard  —  the  author  of  many  books,  and 
a  great  influence  in  literature,  who  Is  also  ones 
of  the  busiest  of  English  lawyers  and  statesmen. 
For  forty  or  fifty  years  this  man  had  never  a 
single  hour  of  leisure  by  day.  All  his  books  were 
produced,  a  page  or  two  at  a  time,  late  in  the 
evening  after  his  household  had  gone  to  sleep. 
It  is  not  really  so  much  a  question  of  time  for  this 
class  of  literature  as  a  question  of  perfect  regu- 


24  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

larity  of  habits.  Even  twenty  minutes  a  day,  or 
twenty  minutes  a  night,  represents  a  great  deal 
in  the  course  of  a  couple  of  years,  and  may  be  so 
used  as  to  produce  great  results.  The  only  thing 
Is  that  this  small  space  of  time  should  be  utilized 
regularly  as  the  clock  strikes  —  never  interrupted 
except  by  unavoidable  circumstances,  such  as  sick- 
ness. To  fatigue  one's  body,  or  to  injure  one's 
eyesight,  by  a  useless  strain  Is  simply  a  crime. 
But  that  should  not  be  necessary  under  any  cir- 
cumstances In  good  health.  Nor  Is  It  necessary 
to  waste  time  and  effort  in  the  production  of  ex- 
actly so  much  finished  manuscript.  Not  at  all. 
The  work  of  literature  should  especially  be  a 
work  of  thinking  and  feeling;  the  end  to  be  greatly 
insisted  upon  is  the  record  of  every  experience  of 
thought  and  feeling.  Make  the  record  even  in 
pencil,  in  short  hand,  in  the  shape  of  little  draw- 
ings —  it  matters  not  how,  so  long  as  the  record 
is  sufficient  to  keep  fresh  the  memory  when  you 
turn  to  It  again.  I  am  quite  sure  that  the  man 
who  loves  literature  and  enjoys  a  normal  amount 
of  good  health  can  make  a  good  book  within  a 
year  or  two,  no  matter  how  busy  he  may  other- 
wise be,  if  he  will  follow  systematic  rules  of  work. 
You  may  ask  what  kind  of  work  is  good  to  be- 
gin with.  I  have  no  hesitation  in  replying,  trans- 
lation. Translation  is  the  best  possible  prepara- 
tion for  original  work,  and  translations  are  vastly 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  25 

needed  In  Japan.  No  knowledge  of  Western  lit- 
erature can  ever  become  really  disseminated  In 
Japan  merely  through  the  university  and  the 
school;  It  can  be  disseminated  only  through  trans- 
lations. The  Influence  of  French,  or  German,  of 
Spanish,  Italian,  and  Russian  literatures  upon 
English  literature  has  been  very  largely  effected 
through  translations.  Scholarship  alone  cannot 
help  the  formation  of  a  new  national  literature. 
Indeed,  the  scholar,  by  the  very  nature  of  his  oc- 
cupation, is  too  apt  to  remain  unproductive. 
After  some  work  of  this  kind,  original  work 
should  be  attempted.  Instinctively  some  Japan- 
ese scholars  have  been  doing  this  very  thing;  they 
have  been  translating  steadily.  But  there  they 
have  mostly  stopped.  Yet,  really,  transla- 
tion should  be  only  the  first  step  of  the  literary 
ladder. 

As  to  original  work,  I  have  long  wanted  to 
say  to  you  something  about  the  real  function  of 
literature  In  relation  not  to  the  public,  but  to  the 
author  himself.  That  function  should  be  moral. 
Literature  ought  to  be  especially  a  moral  exer- 
cise. When  I  use  the  word  moral,  please  do  not 
understand  me  to  mean  anything  religious,  or 
anything  in  the  sense  of  the  exact  opposite  of  Im- 
moral. I  use  It  here  only  In  the  meaning  of  self- 
culture  —  the  development  within  us  of  the  best 
and  strongest  qualities  of  heart  and  mind.     Lit- 


26  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

erature  ought  to  be,  for  him  that  produces  it,  the 
chief  pleasure  and  the  constant  consolation  of  life. 
Now,  old  Japanese  customs  recognized  this  fact 
in  a  certain  way.  I  am  referring  to  the  custom 
of  composing  poetry  in  time  of  pain,  in  time  of 
sorrow,  in  all  times  of  mental  trials,  as  a  moral 
exercise.  In  this  particular  form  the  custom  is 
particularly  Japanese,  or  perhaps  in  origin  Chin- 
ese, not  Western.  But  I  assure  you  that  among 
men  of  letters  in  the  West,  the  moral  idea  has 
been  followed  for  hundreds  of  years,  not  only  in 
regard  to  poetry,  but  in  regard  to  prose.  It  has 
not  been  understood  by  Western  writers  in  the 
same  sharp  way;  it  has  not  been  taught  as  a  rule  of 
conduct;  it  has  not  been  known  except  to  the  elect, 
the  very  best  men.  But  the  very  best  men  have 
found  this  out;  and  they  have  always  turned  to 
literature  as  a  moral  consolation  for  all  the 
troubles  of  life.  Do  you  remember  the  story  of 
the  great  Goethe,  who  when  told  of  the  death  of 
his  son,  exclaimed  "  Forward,  across  the  dead '' 
—  and  went  on  with  his  work?  It  was  not  the 
first  time  that  he  had  conquered  his  grief  by  turn- 
ing his  mind  to  composition.  Almost  any  author 
of  experience  learns  to  do  something  of  this 
kind.  Tennyson  wrote  his  ''In  Memoriam '* 
simply  as  a  refuge  from  his  great  grief.  Among 
the  poets  about  whom  I  lectured  to  you  this  year, 
there  is  scarcely  one  whose  work  does  not  yield 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  27 

a  record  of  the  same  thing.  The  lover  of  litera- 
ture has  a  medicine  for  grief  that  no  doctor  can 
furnish;  he  can  always  transmute  his  pain  into 
something  precious  and  lasting.  None  of  us  in 
this  world  can  expect  to  be  very  happy;  the  pro- 
portion of  happiness  to  unhappiness  in  the  aver- 
age human  life  has  been  estimated  as  something 
less  than  one-third.  No  matter  how  healthy  or 
strong  or  fortunate  you  may  be,  every  one  of  you 
must  expect  to  endure  a  great  deal  of  pain;  and 
it  is  worth  while  for  you  to  ask  yourselves  whether 
you  cannot  put  it  to  good  use.  For  pain  has  a 
very  great  value  to  the  mind  that  knows  how  to 
utilize  it.  Nay,  more  than  this  must  be  said; 
nothing  great  ever  was  written,  or  ever  will  be 
written,  by  a  man  who  does  not  know  pain.  All 
great  literature  has  its  source  in  the  rich  soil  of 
sorrow;  and  that  is  the  real  meaning  of  the  fa- 
mous verses  of  Goethe : 

Who  ne'er  his  bread  in  sorrow  ate, — 
Who  ne'er  the  lonely  midnight  hours, 
Weeping  upon  his  bed  has  sat, — 
He  knows  ye  not,   ye   Heavenly   powers. 

Emerson  has  uttered  very  nearly  the  same  idea 
with  those  famous  verses  in  which  he  describes 
the  moral  effect  upon  a  strong  mind  of  the  great 
sorrow  caused  by  the  death  of  the  woman  be- 
loved : 


28  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

Though  thou  loved  her  as  thyself, 

As  a  self  of  purer  clay, 

Though  her  parting  dims  the  day. 

Stealing  grace  from  all  alive  — 

Heartily  know, 

When  half-gods  go 

The  Gods  arrive! 

That  is  to  say,  even  if  you  loved  that  woman 
more  than  yourself  and  thought  of  her  as  a  being 
superior  to  humanity,  even  if  with  her  death  the 
whole  world  seemed  to  grow  dark,  and  all 
things  to  become  colourless,  and  all  life  to  lose  its 
charm;  that  grief  may  be  good  for  you.  It  is 
only  when  the  demi-gods,  the  half-gods,  have  left 
us,  that  we  first  become  able  to  understand  and 
to  see  the  really  divine.  For  all  pain  helps  to 
make  us  wise,  howevermuch  we  may  hate  it  at  the 
time.  Of  course  it  is  only  the  young  man  who 
sits  upon  his  bed  at  midnight  and  weeps;  he  is 
weak  only  for  want  of  experience.  The  mature 
man  will  not  weep,  but  he  will  turn  to  literature 
in  order  to  compose  his  mind;  and  he  will  put  his 
pain  into  beautiful  songs  or  thoughts  that  will 
help  to  make  the  hearts  of  all  who  read  them 
more  tender  and  true. 

Remember,  I  do  not  mean  that  a  literary  man 
should  write  only  to  try  and  forget  his  suffering. 
That  will  do  very  well  for  a  beginning,  for  a  boy- 
ish effort.  But  a  strong  man  ought  not  to  try  to 
forget  in  that  way.     On  the  contrary,  he  should 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  29 

try  to  think  a  great  deal  about  his  grief,  to  think 
of  it  as  representing  only  one  little  drop  in  the 
great  sea  of  the  world's  pain,  to  think  about  it 
bravely,  and  to  put  his  thoughts  about  it  into 
beautiful  and  impersonal  form.  Nobody  should 
allow  himself  for  a  moment  to  imagine  that  his 
own  particular  grief,  that  his  own  private  loss, 
that  his  own  personal  pain,  can  have  any  value  in 
literature,  except  in  so  far  as  it  truly  represents 
the  great  pain  of  human  life. 

Above  all  things  the  literary  man  must  not  be 
selfish  in  his  writing.  No  selfish  reflection  is 
likely  to  have  the  least  value;  that  is  why  no 
really  selfish  person  can  ever  become  either  a 
great  poet  or  a  great  dramatist.  To  meet  and  to 
master  pain,  but  especially  to  master  it,  is  what 
gives  strength.  Men  wrestle  in  order  to  become 
strong;  and  for  mental  strength,  one  must  learn 
to  wrestle  with  troubles  of  all  kinds.  Think  of 
all  the  similes  in  literature  that  express  this  truth 
— about  fire  separating  the  gold  from  the  rock, 
about  stones  becoming  polished  by  striking  to- 
gether in  the  flow  of  a  stream,  about  a  hundred 
natural  changes  representing  the  violent  separa- 
tion or  the  destruction  of  what  is  superficial. 

Better  than  any  advice  about  methods  or  mod- 
els, is  I  think  the  simple  counsel:  Whenever  you 
are  in  trouble  and  do  not  know  exactly  what  to 
do,  sit  down  and  write  something. 


30  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

Yet  one  more  thing  remains  to  be  said,  and  it 
is  not  unimportant.     It   is   this:   A   thing   once 
written  is  not  literature.     The  great  difference 
between  literature  and  everything  included  under 
the  name  of  journalism  lies  in  this  fact.     No  man 
can   produce   real   literature    at   one   writing.     I      | 
know  that  there  are  a  great  many  stories  about 
famous  men  sitting  down  to  write  a  wonderful 
book  at  one  effort,  and  never  even  correcting  the 
manuscript  afterwards.     But  I  must  tell  you  that 
the    consensus    of    literary    experience    declares 
nearly  all  these  stories  to  be  palpable  lies.     To 
produce  even  a  single  sentence  of  good  literature 
requires  that  the  text  be  written  at  least  three 
times.     But  for  one  who  is  beginning,  three  times 
three  were  not  too  much.     And  I  am  not  speak- 
ing of  poetry  at  all  —  that  may  have  to  be  writ- 
ten over  as  many  as  fifty  times  before  the  proper 
effect  is  attained.     You  will  perhaps  think  this  is 
a  contradiction  of  what  I  told  you  before,  about 
the  great  value  of  writing  down,  even  in  pencil, 
little  notes  of  your  thoughts  and  feelings.     But 
the  contradiction  only  seems;  really  there  is  no 
contradiction  at  all.     The  value  of  the  first  notes 
is  very  great  —  greater  than  the  value  of  any  in- 
termediate form.     But  the  writer  should  remem- 
ber that  such  notes  represent  only  the  outline  of 
the  foundation,  the  surveying  and  the  clearing  of 
the   ground   on   which    his   literary   structure   is 


LIFE  AND  CHARACTER  31 

slowly  and  painfully  to  be  raised.  The  first  notes 
do  not  express  the  real  thought  or  the  real  feel- 
ing, no  matter  now  carefully  you  try  to  write 
them.  They  are  only  signs,  ideographs,  helping 
you  to  remember.  And  you  will  find  that  to  re- 
produce the  real  thought  faithfully  in  words  will 
require  a  great  deal  of  time.  I  am  quite  sure 
that  few  of  you  will  try  to  do  work  in  this  way 
in  the  beginning;  you  will  try  every  other  way 
first,  and  have  many  disappointments.  Only  pain- 
ful experience  can  assure  you  of  the  necessity  of 
doing  this.  For  literature  more  than  for  any 
other  art,  the  all-necessary  thing  is  patience. 
That  is  especially  why  I  cannot  recommend  jour- 
nalism as  a  medium  of  expression  to  literary  stu- 
dents —  at  least,  not  as  a  regular  occupation. 
For  journalism  cannot  wait,  and  the  best  litera- 
ture must  wait. 

I  am  not  sure  that  these  suggestions  can  have 
any  immediate  value;  I  only  hope  that  you  will 
try  to  remember  them.  But  in  order  to  test  the 
worth  of  one  of  them,  I  very  much  hope  that 
somebody  will  try  the  experiment  of  writing  one 
little  story  or  narrative  poem,  putting  it  in  a 
drawer,  writing  it  over  again,  and  hiding  it  again, 
month  after  month,  for  the  time  of  one  year. 
The  work  need  not  take  more  than  a  few  minutes 
every  day  after  the  first  writing.  After  the  last 
writing  at  the  end  of  the  year,  if  you  read  it  over 


32  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

again,  you  will  find  that  the  difference  between 
the  first  form  and  the  last  Is  exactly  like  the  dif- 
ference of  seeing  a  tree  a  mile  off,  first  with  the 
naked  eye,  and  afterwards  with  a  very  powerful 
telescope. 


CHAPTER  II 

ON   COMPOSITION 
I 

I  hope  to  give,  at  least  once  in  each  term,  a 
short  lecture  upon  the  practical  part  of  literature 
and  literary  study.  This  will  be,  or  ought  to  be, 
of  much  more  value  to  you  than  there  could  be 
in  a  single  lecture  upon  the  characteristics  of  an 
author.  I  want  to  speak  to  you  only  as  a  practi- 
cal man-of-letters,  as  one  who  has  served  his  ap- 
prenticeship at  the  difficult  trade  of  literature. 
Please  understand  that  in  saying  this,  I  am  saying 
only  "I  am  a  workman,"  just  as  a  carpenter 
would  say  to  you  "  I  am  a  carpenter,"  or  a  smith, 
"  I  am  a  smith."  This  does  not  mean  in  any 
sense  that  I  am  a  good  workman.  I  might  be  a 
very  bad  workman,  and  still  have  the  right  to 
call  myself  a  workman.  When  a  carpenter  tells 
you,  "  I  am  a  carpenter,"  you  can  beHeve  him; 
but  that  does  not  mean  that  he  thinks  himself  a 
good  carpenter.  As  for  his  work,  you  can  judge 
of  that  when  you  find  occasion  to  pay  for  it.  But 
whether  the  man  be  a  clumsy  and  idle  workman, 
or  be  the  best  carpenter  in  town,  you  know  that 

33 


34  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

he  can  tell  you  something  which  you  do  not  know. 
He  has  learned  how  to  handle  tools,  and  how  to 
choose  the  kind  of  wood  best  adapted  to  certain 
sorts  of  manufacture.  He  may  be  a  cheat;  he 
may  be  very  careless  about  what  he  does;  but  it  Is 
quite  certain  that  you  could  learn  something  from 
him,  because  he  has  served  an  apprenticeship,  and 
knows,  by  constant  practice  of  hand  and  eye,  how 
a  carpenter's  work  should  be  done. 

So  much  for  my  position  in  the  matter.  Now  I 
want  to  begin  my  lecture  by  trying  to  disabuse 
your  minds  of  two  or  three  common  errors  in  re- 
gard to  literary  composition.  I  do  not  say  that 
you  all  indulge  these  errors;  but  I  think  it  not 
improbable.  The  first  error  against  which  I  wish 
to  warn  you  is  the  very  widespread  error  that  the 
making  of  hterature  —  that  is  to  say,  the  writ- 
ing of  books  or  poems  —  is  a  matter  that  you  can 
learn  through  education,  through  the  reading  of 
books,  through  the  mastery  of  theories.  I  am 
going  to  be  absolutely  frank  with  you,  but  quite 
heterodox  notwithstanding,  by  telling  you  that 
education  will  not  help  you  to  become  a  poet  or  a 
story-teller  any  more  than  it  could  help  you  to 
become  a  carpenter  or  a  blacksmith.  There  are 
accessible  to  you,  in  libraries,  any  number  of 
books  and  treatises  about  different  kinds  of 
woods,  about  different  kinds  of  tools,  and  about 
the  Industry  of  woodwork.     You  might  read  all 


ON  COMPOSITION  35 

of  these,  and  learn  by  heart  every  fact  of  im- 
portance that  they  contain;  but  that  would  not 
enable  you  to  make  with  your  own  hands  a  good 
table  or  a  good  chair.  So  reading  about  writing 
will  not  teach  you  how'  to  write.  Literature  is 
exactly  like  a  trade  in  this  sense  that  it  can  only 
be  acquired  by  practice.  I  know  that  such  a 
statement  will  shock  certain  persons  of  much  more 
learning  than  I  could  ever  hope  to  acquire.  But 
I  believe  this  would  be  entirely  due  to  what  is 
called  educational  bias.  The  teachers  who  teach 
that  literature  as  a  practical  art  has  anything  to 
do  with  the  mere  study  of  books,  seem  to  forget 
that  much  of  the  world's  greatest  literature  was 
made  before  there  were  any  books,  that  the  poems 
of  Homer  were  composed  before  there  were  any 
schools  or  grammars,  that  the  sacred  books  of 
nearly  all  the  great  civilizations  were  written 
without  rules,  either  grammatical  or  other  —  and 
yet  these  works  remain  our  admiration  for  all 
time. 

Another  error  to  be  considered,  is  that  the 
structure  of  your  own  language  is  of  such  a  kind 
that  Western  rules  of  literary  art  could  not  be 
applied  to  it.  But  if  there  be  any  truth  in  such 
a  belief,  it  is  truth  of  a  most  unimportant  kind. 
As  I  have  told  you  that  a  knowledge  of  literary 
technicalities,  grammatical  or  prosodical,  will  not 
teach  you  how  to  write,  you  will  already  be  able 


36  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

to  guess  how  little  I  think  of  the  importance  to 
you  of  what  are  commonly  called  rules  of  com- 
position. These  foreign  rules,  indeed,  are  not 
applicable  to  your  language;  but  they  have  no 
value  whatever  in  the  sense  I  mean.  Let  us  for 
the  time  being  throw  all  such  rules  overboard,  and 
not  even  think  about  them.  And  now  that  the 
position  is  thus  made  clear,  or  at  least  clearer,  let 
me  say  that  the  higher  rules  of  literature  are  uni- 
versal, and  apply  equally  well  to  every  language 
under  the  sun,  no  matter  what  its  construction. 
For  these  universal  rules  have  to  do  only  with 
the  truth ;  and  truth  is  truth  everywhere,  no  mat- 
ter in  what  tongue  it  may  be  spoken.  Presently 
we  shall  turn  back  to  the  subject  of  the  universal 
rule  —  indeed  it  will  form  the  principal  part  of 
this  lecture. 

The  third  error  against  which  I  wish  to  warn 
you  Is  the  foolish  belief  that  great  work,  or  even 
worthy  work,  can  be  done  without  pains  —  with- 
out very  great  pains.  Nothing  has  been  more 
productive  of  Injury  to  young  literary  students 
than  those  stories,  or  legends,  about  great  writers 
having  written  great  books  in  a  very  short  time. 
They  suggest  what  must  be  in  a  million  cases  im- 
possible, as  a  common  possibility.  You  hear  of 
Johnson  having  written  "  Rasselas  "  in  a  few 
weeks,  or  of  Beckford  having  done  a  similar 
thing,  of  various  other  notables  never  correcting 


ON  COMPOSITION  37 

their  manuscript  —  and  the  youth  who  has  much 
self-confidence  imagines  that  he  can  do  the  same 
thing  and  produce  hterature.  I  do  not  beheve 
those  stories.  I  do  not  say  exactly  that  they  are 
not  true;  I  only  say  that  I  do  not  believe  them, 
and  that  the  books,  as  we  have  them  now,  cer- 
tainly represent  much  more  than  the  work  of  a 
few  weeks  or  even  months.  It  is  much  more  val- 
uable to  remember  that  Gray  passed  fourteen 
years  in  correcting  and  Improving  a  single  poem, 
and  that  no  great  poem  or  book,  as  we  now  have 
the  text,  represents  the  first  form  of  the  text. 
Take,  for  example,  the  poets  that  we  have  been 
reading.  It  Is  commonly  said  that  Rossettl's 
*'  Blessed  Damosel  "  was  written  In  his  nineteenth 
year.  This  Is  true;  but  we  have  the  text  of  the 
poem  as  it  was  written  in  his  nineteenth  year,  and 
it  is  unlike  the  poem  as  we  now  have  it;  for  it  was 
changed  and  corrected  and  recorrected  scores  of 
times  to  bring  It  to  Its  present  state  of  perfection. 
Almost  everything  composed  by  Tennyson  was 
changed  and  changed  and  changed  again,  to  such 
an  extent  that  In  almost  every  edition  the  text 
differed.  Above  all  things  do  not  Imagine  that 
any  good  work  can  be  done  without  Immense 
pains.  When  Dr.  Max  Miiller  told  Froude,  the 
historian,  that  he  never  corrected  what  he  wrote, 
Froude  immediately  answered  "  Unless  you  cor- 
rect a  great  many  times,  you  will  never  be  able  to 


38  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

write  good  English."  Now  there  is  good  Eng- 
lish and  good  English;  and  I  am  not  sure  that 
Froude  was  right.  Froude  was  thinking,  I  be- 
lieve, of  literary  English.  Correct  English  can 
be  written  without  correction,  by  dint  of  long 
practise  In  precise  writing.  Business  letters  and 
official  documents  and  various  compositions  of  a 
kindred  sort  must  be  correct  English;  they  are 
written  entirely  according  to  forms  and  ryles,  ex- 
actly like  legal  papers  in  which  the  mistake  of  one 
word  might  cause  unspeakable  mischief.  But  all 
this  has  nothing  to  do  with  literature.  If  the 
art  of  writing  good  English  or  good  French  or 
good  Japanese  were  literature,  then  the  lawyers 
and  the  bank  clerks  would  represent  the  highest 
literature  of  their  respective  countries.  So  far, 
however,  as  Froude  meant  literary  English,  he  is 
absolutely  right.  No  literature  can  be  produced 
without  much  correction.  I  have  told  you  of 
primitive  literature  composed  before  the  time  of 
books  and  of  grammars,  which  was  and  is,  and 
will  long  continue  to  be,  unrivalled  literature. 
But  do  you  suppose  that  it  never  was  corrected 
and  changed  and  re-made  over  and  over  and  over 
again?  Why,  most  assuredly  it  was,  and  cor- 
rected not  by  one  only  but  by  thousands  and 
thousands  of  persons  who  had  learned  it  by  heart. 
Every  generation  Improved  It  a  little;  and  at  last, 
when  it  came  to  be  written  down,  it  had  been 


ON  COMPOSITION  39 

polished  and  perfected  by  the  labour  of  hundreds 
of  years. 

Now  I  suppose  all  of  you  have  at  some  time 
wanted  to  get  books  about  how  to  write  Eng- 
lish, I  suppose  that  you  have  all  found  them,  and 
that  the  result  was  only  disappointment.  It 
would  have  been  disappointment  just  the  same 
if  you  had  been  looking  for  French  books  on  how 
to  write  French,  or  German  books  on  how  to 
write  German.  No  books  yet  exist  that  will 
teach  you  literary  work,  which  will  teach  you  the 
real  secrets  of  composition.  Some  daf,  I  trust, 
there  will  be  such  books;  but  at  present  there  are 
none,  simply  because  the  only  men  capable  of 
writing  them  are  men  who  have  no  time  to  give 
to  such  work.  But  this  having  been  said,  let  us 
return  to  the  subject  of  Japanese  composition. 
Before  trying  to  give  you  some  practical  rules,  let 
me  assure  you  of  one  thing,  that  all  your  foreign 
studies  can  be  of  no  literary  use  to  you  except  In 
relation  to  your  own  tongue.  You  can  not  write, 
you  will  never  be  able  to  write,  English  literature 
or  French  literature  or  German  literature,  though 
you  might  be  able,  after  years  of  practice  and  for- 
eign travel,  to  write  tolerably  correct  English  or 
French  or  German  —  to  write  a  business  docu- 
ment, for  example,  or  to  write  a  simple  essay 
dealing  only  with  bare  facts.  But  none  of  you 
can  hope  to  be  eloquent  in  any  other  tongue  than 


40  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

your  own,  or  to  move  the  hearts  of  people  by 
writing  in  a  language  which  is  not  your  own. 
There  are  very  few  examples  in  all  English  litera- 
ture of  a  man  able  to  write  equally  well  in  two 
languages  —  in  French  and  in  English  for  ex- 
ample, close  as  are  these  tongues  to  each  other. 
With  an  oriental  language  for  a  mother  tongue, 
the  only  hope  of  being  able  to  create  a  literature 
in  a  foreign  language  is  in  totally  forgetting  your 
own.  But  the  result  would  not  be  worth  the  sac- 
rifice. 

I  suppose  that  many  of  you  will  become  au- 
thors, either  by  accident  or  by  inclination;  and 
if  you  produce  literature,  prose  or  verse,  it  is  to 
be  hoped  that  you  will  influence  the  future  litera- 
ture of  your  country,  by  infusing  into  the  work 
those  new  ideas  which  a  university  course  must 
have  forced  upon  you  by  thousands.  But  this 
alone,  this  imparting  of  new  ideas,  of  larger 
knowledge,  would  not  be  literature.  Literature 
is  not  scholarship,  though  it  may  contain  scholar- 
ship. Literature  means,  as  I  have  said  before, 
the  highest  possible  appeal  of  language  to  the 
higher  emotions  and  the  nobler  sentiments.  It  is 
not  learning,  nor  can  it  be  made  by  any  rules  of 
learning. 

And  now  we  can  turn  to  the  practical  side  of 
the  subject. 

I  begin  by  asking  you  to  remember  that  the 


ON  COMPOSITION  41 

principles  of  literary  composition  of  the  highest 
class  must  be  exactly  the  same  for  Japan  or  for 
France  or  for  England  or  for  any  other  country. 
These  principles  are  of  two  kinds,  elimination 
and  addition  —  in  other  words,  a  taking  away  or 
getting  rid  of  the  unnecessary,  and  the  continual 
strengthening  of  the  necessary.  Besides  this, 
composition  means  very  little  Indeed.  The  first 
thing  needed,  of  course.  Is  a  perfect  knowledge 
of  your  own  tongue  as  spoken;  I  will  not  say  as 
written,  for  a  perfect  knowledge  of  any  tongue 
as  written  Is  possible  only  to  scholarship,  and  is 
not  at  all  essential  to  literature.  But  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  living  speech,  in  all  its  forms,  high 
and  low,  common  and  uncommon,  is  very  desir- 
able. If  one  can  not  hope  to  obtain  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  whole  spoken  speech,  then  I  should 
'advise  him  to  throw  his  strength  into  the  study 
of  a  part  only,  the  part  that  is  most  natural  to 
him.  Even  with  this  partial  knowledge  excellent 
literature  is  possible.  But  full  knowledge  will 
produce  larger  results  in  the  case  of  large  talent. 


II 

In  all  this  lecture  you  must  not  forget  my  def- 
inition of  literature  as  an  art  of  emotional  ex- 
pression.    And  the  first  thing  to  be  considered  is 


42  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

the  emotion  Itself,  its  value,  its  fugitive  subtlety, 
and  the  extreme  difficulty  of  *'  getting  hold  of  It." 

You  might  ask  why  I  put  the  emotion  before 
the  sensation.  Of  course  the  sensation  always 
precedes  the  emotion.  The  sensation  means  the 
first  impression  received  from  the  senses,  or  the 
revival  in  memory  of  such  an  impression.  The 
emotion  is  the  feeling,  very  complex,  that  follows 
the  sensation  or  Impression.  Do  not  forget  this 
distinction;  for  It  is  very  important  Indeed. 

Now  the  reason  why  I  am  not  going  to  say 
much  to  you  about  the  sensation,  is  that  if  a  sen- 
sation could  be  accurately  described  in  words,  the 
result  would  be  something  like  a  photograph, 
nothing  more.  You  might  say,  a  coloured  photo- 
graph; and  it  is  true  that  if  we  discover  (as  we 
shall  certainly  some  day  discover)  the  art  of 
photographing  In  colours,  such  a  coloured  photo- 
graph would  represent  almost  exactly  a  visual  im- 
pression. But  this  would  not  be  art.  A  photo- 
graph is  not  art;  and  the  nearer  that  a  painting 
resembles  a  photograph  by  Its  accuracy,  the  less 
it  is  likely  to  be  worth  much  from  the  artistic 
point  of  view.  To  describe  sensations  would  be 
no  more  literature  In  the  higher  sense,  than  a 
photograph  could  be  called  art  In  the  higher  sense. 
I  shall  therefore  boldly  take  the  position  that  lit- 
erature is  not  a  picture  of  sensations,  but  of  emo- 
tions. 


ON  COMPOSITION  43' 

All  this  must  be  very  fully  Illustrated.  When 
I  say  ''  emotion  "  you  perhaps  think  of  tears,  sor- 
row, regret.  But  this  would  be  a  mistake.  Let 
us  begin  by  considering  the  very  simplest  kind  of 
emotion  —  the  emotion  of  a  tree. 

Two  things  happen  when  you  look  at  a  tree. 
First  you  have  the  picture  of  the  tree  reflected 
upon  the  brain  through  the  medium  of  sight  — 
that  Is  to  say,  a  little  card  picture,  a  little  photo- 
graph of  the  tree.  But  even  If  you  wanted  to 
paint  this  Image  with  words  you  could  not  do  It; 
and  If  you  could  do  it,  the  result  would  not  be 
worth  talking  about.  But  almost  as  quickly,  you 
receive  a  second  Impression,  very  different  from 
the  first.  You  observe  that  the  tree  gives  you  a 
peculiar  feeling  of  some  kind.  The  tree  has  a 
certain  character,  and  this  perception  of  the 
character  of  the  tree.  Is  the  feeling  or  the  emo- 
tion of  the  tree.  That  is  what  the  artist  looks 
for;  and  that  is  what  the  poet  looks  for. 

But  we  must  explain  this  a  little  more.  Every 
object,  animate  or  Inanimate,  causes  a  certain  feel- 
ing within  the  person  who  observes  It.  Every- 
thing has  a  face.  Whenever  you  meet  a  person 
for  the  first  time,  and  look  at  the  face  of  that 
person,  you  receive  an  impression  that  is  imme- 
diately followed  by  some  kind  of  feeling.  Either 
you  like  the  face,  or  you  dislike  it,  or  it  leaves  in 
you  a  state  of  comparative  indifference.     We  all 


44  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

know  this  in  regard  to  faces;  but  only  the  artist 
and  poet  know  it  in  regard  to  things.  And  the 
difference  between  the  great  artist  and  the  great 
poet  and  the  rest  of  the  world  is  only  that  the 
artist  or  the  poet  perceives  the  face  of  things, 
what  is  called  the  physiognomy  of  things  —  that 
is  to  say,  their  character.  A  tree,  a  mountain,  a 
house,  even  a  stone  has  a  face  and  a  character  for 
the  artistic  eye.  And  we  can  train  ourselves  to 
see  that  character  by  pursuing  the  proper  methods. 
Now  suppose  that  I  were  to  ask  all  of  you  to 
describe  for  me  a  certain  tree  in  the  garden  of  the 
University.  I  should  expect  that  a  majority 
among  you  would  write  very  nearly  the  same 
thing.  But  would  this  be  a  proof  that  the  tree 
had  given  to  all  of  you  the  same  kind  of  feeling? 
No,  it  would  not  mean  anything  of  the  sort.  It 
would  mean  only  that  a  majority  among  you  had 
acquired  habits  of  thinking  and  writing  which  are 
contrary  to  the  principles  of  art.  Most  of  you 
would  describe  the  tree  in  nearly  the  same  way, 
because,  in  the  course  of  years  of  study,  your 
minds  have  been  filled  with  those  forms  of  lan- 
guage commonly  used  to  describe  trees;  you 
would  remember  the  words  of  some  famous  poet 
or  story-teller,  and  would  use  them  as  expressing 
your  own  feehngs.  But  it  is  perfectly  certain  that 
they  would  not  express  your  own  feelings.  Edu- 
cation usually  teaches  us  to  use  the  ideas  and  the 


ON  COMPOSITION  45 

language  of  other  men  to  describe  our  own  feel- 
ings, and  this  habit  is  exactly  contrary  to  every 
principle  of  art. 

Now  suppose  there  is  one  among  you  of  a  re- 
markably powerful  talent  of  the  poetical  and 
artistic  kind.  His  description  of  the  tree  would 
be  startlingly  different  from  that  of  the  rest  of 
you ;  it  would  surprise  you  all,  so  that  you  would 
have  to  look  at  the  tree  again  in  order  to  see 
whether  the  description  was  true.  Then  you 
would  be  still  more  astonished  to  find  that  it  was 
much  more  true  than  any  other;  and  then  you 
would  not  only  discover  that  he  had  enabled  you 
to  understand  the  tree  in  a  new  way,  but  also 
that  the  rest  of  you  had  but  half  seen  it,  and  that 
your  descriptions  were  all  wrong.  He  would  not 
have  used  the  words  of  other  men  to  describe  the 
tree ;  he  would  have  used  his  own,  and  they  would 
be  very  simple  words  indeed,  like  the  words  of  a 
child. 

For  the  child  is  incomparably  superior  to  the 
average  man  in  seeing  the  character  of  things; 
and  the  artist  sees  like  the  child.  If  I  were  to 
ask  twenty  little  children  ■ —  say,  five  or  six  years 
old  —  to  look  at  the  same  tree  that  we  were  talk- 
ing about,  and  to  tell  me  what  they  think  of  it, 
I  am  sure  that  many  of  them  would  say  wonder- 
ful things.  They  would  come  much  nearer  to  the 
truth  than  the  average  university  student,  and  this 


46  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

just  because  of  their  absolute  Innocence.  To  the 
child's  imagination  everything  is  alive  —  stones, 
trees,  plants,  even  household  objects.  For  him 
everything  has  a  soul.  He  sees  things  quite  dif- 
ferently from  the  man.  Nor  is  this  the  only  rea- 
son for  the  superiority  of  the  child's  powers  of 
observation.  His  instinctive  knowledge,  the 
knowledge  inherited  from  millions  of  past  lives, 
is  still  fresh,  not  dulled  by  the  weight  of  the 
myriad  impressions  of  education  and  personal  ex- 
perience. Ask  a  child,  for  example,  what  he 
thinks  of  a  certain  stranger.  He  will  look  and 
say  "  I  like  him,"  or  "  I  disHke  him."  Should  you* 
ask,  "  Why  do  you  dislike  that  man?  "  the  child, 
after  some  difficulty,  will  tell  you  that  he  does  not 
like  something  in  his  face.  Press  the  little  fellow 
further  to  explain,  and  after  a  long  and  painful 
effort  he  will  suddenly  come  out  with  a  compari- 
son of  startling  truth  that  will  surprise  you,  show- 
ing that  he  has  perceived  something  in  the  face 
that  you  did  not  see.  This  same  instinctive 
power  is  the  real  power  of  the  artist,  and  it  is 
the  power  that  distinguishes  literature  from  mere 
writing.  You  will  now  better  understand  what  I 
meant  by  saying  that  education  will  not  teach  a 
person  how  to  make  poetry,  any  more  than  a 
reading  of  books  could  teach  a  man  how  to  make 
a  table  or  a  chair.  The  faculty  of  artistic  seeing 
is  independent  of  education,  and  must  be  culti- 


ON  COMPOSITION  47 

vated  outside  of  education.  Education  has  not 
made  great  writers.  On  the  contrary,  they  have 
become  great  In  spite  of  education.  For  the  ef- 
fect of  education  Is  necessarily  to  deaden  and 
dull  those  primitive  and  Instinctive  feelings  upon 
which  the  higher  phases  of  emotional  art  depend. 
Knowledge  can  only  be  gained  In  most  cases  at 
the  expense  of  certain  very  precious  natural  facul- 
ties. The  man  who  Is  able  to  keep  the  freshness 
of  the  child  In  his  mind  and  heart,  notwithstand- 
ing all  the  knowledge  that  he  absorbs,  that  Is  the 
man  who  Is  likely  to  perform  great  things  In  lit- 
erature. 

Now  we  have  clearly  defined  what  I  mean  by 
the  feeling  or  emotion  which  the  artist  In  litera- 
ture must  seek  to  catch  and  express.     We  took 
the  simplest  example  possible,  a  tree.     But  every- 
thing,  and  every  fancy,   and  every  being  to  be 
treated  of  In  literature  must  be  considered  In  pre- 
cisely the  same  way.     In  all  cases  the  object  of  \ 
the  writer  should  be  to  seize  and  fix  the  character  ■ 
of  the  thing,  and  he  can  do  this  only  by  expressing  ' 
the  exact  feeling  that  the  thing  has  produced  In 
his  mind.     This  Is  the  main  work  of  literature. 
It  is  very  difficult.     But  why  it  Is  difficult  we  have 
not  yet  considered. 

What  happens  when  the  feehng  comes?  You 
feel  then  a  momentary  thrill  of  pleasure  or  pain 
or  fear  or  wonder;  but  this  thrill  passes  away  al- 


48  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

most  as  suddenly  as  it  comes.  You  can  not  write 
it  down  as  fast  as  it  vanishes.  You  are  left  then 
only  with  the  sensation  or  first  impression  of  the 
thing  in  your  mind,  and  a  mere  memory  of  the 
feeling.  In  different  natures  the  feeling  is  dif- 
ferent, and  it  lasts  longer  in  some  than  in  others; 
but  in  all  cases  it  passes  away  as  rapidly  as  smoke, 
or  perfume  blown  by  a  wind.  If  you  think  that 
anybody  can  put  down  on  paper  this  feeling  ex- 
actly as  it  is  received,  immediately  upon  receiving 
it,  you  are  much  mistaken.  This  can  be  accom- 
plished only  by  arduous  labour.  The  labour  is 
to  revive  the  feeling. 

At  first  you  will  be  exactly  in  the  condition  of  a 
person  trying  to  remember  a  dream  after  waking 
up.  All  of  us  know  how  difficult  it  is  to  remem- 
ber a  dream.  But  by  the  help  of  the  sensation, 
which  was  received  during  sleep,  the  feeling  may 
be  revived.  My  recommendation  would  be  in 
such  a  case  to  write  down  immediately,  as  fully  as 
you  can,  the  circumstances  and  the  cause  of  the 
emotion,  and  to  try  to  describe  the  feeling  as  far 
as  possible.  It  makes  no  difference  then  whether 
you  write  at  all  grammatically,  nor  whether  you 
finish  your  sentences,  nor  whether  you  write  back- 
wards or  forwards.  The  all-essential  thing  is  to 
have  notes  of  the  experience.  These  notes  should 
be  the  seed  from  which  the  plant  will  be  made  to 
grow  and  to  blossom. 


ON  COMPOSITION  49 

Reading  over  these  quick  notes,  you  will  per- 
ceive that  the  feeling  is  faintly  revived  by  them, 
especially  by  certain  parts  of  them.  But  of 
course,  except  to  you,  the  notes  would  still  be  of 
no  possible  value.  The  next  work  is  to  develop 
the  notes,  to  arrange  them  in  their  natural  order, 
and  to  construct  the  sentences  in  a  correct  way. 
While  doing  this  you  will  find  that  a  number  of 
things  come  back  to  your  mind  which  you  had  for- 
gotten while  making  the  notes.  The  develop- 
ment of  the  notes  is  likely  to  be  four  or  f\vt  times 
longer,  perhaps  even  ten  times  longer,  than  were 
the  notes  themselves.  But  now,  reading  over  the 
new  writing,  you  find  that  the  feeling  is  not  re- 
vived by  it;  the  feeling  has  entirely  vanished,  and 
what  you  have  written  Is  likely  to  seem  common- 
place enough.  A  third  writing  you  will  find  to 
better  both  the  language  and  the  thought,  but  per- 
haps the  feeling  does  not  revive.  A  fourth  and 
a  fifth  writing  will  involve  an  astonishing  number 
of  changes.  For  while  engaged  in  this  tiresome 
work,  you  are  sure  to  find  that  a  number  of  things 
which  you  have  already  written  are  not  necessary, 
and  you  will  also  find  that  the  most  important 
things  remaining  have  not  been  properly  devel- 
oped at  all.  While  you  are  doing  the  work  over 
again,  new  thoughts  come;  the  whole  thing 
changes  shape,  begins  to  be  more  compact,  more 
strong  and  simple ;  and  at  last,  to  your  delight,  the 


so  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

feeling  revives  —  nay,  revives  more  strongly  than 
at  first,  being  enriched  by  new  psychological  re- 
lations. You  will  be  surprised  at  the  beauty  of 
what  you  have  done;  but  you  must  not  trust  the 
feeling  then.  Instead  of  immediately  printing  the 
thing,  I  should  advise  you  to  put  it  into  a  drawer, 
and  leave  it  there  for  at  least  a  month,  without 
looking  at  it  again.  When  you  re-read  it  after 
this  interval,  you  are  certain  to  find  that  you  can 
perfect  it  a  great  deal  more.  After  one  or  two 
further  remodellings  it  will  be  perhaps  the  very 
best  that  you  can  do,  and  will  give  to  others  the 
same  emotion  that  you  yourself  felt  on  first  per- 
ceiving the  fact  or  the  object.  The  process  is 
very  much  like  that  of  focusing  with  a  telescope. 
You  know  that  you  must  pull  the  tubing  out  a 
little  further,  or  push  it  in  a  little  further,  and 
then  pull  it  again  and  then  push  it  again  many 
times  before  you  can  get  the  sharpest  possible 
view  of  a  distant  object.  Well,  the  literary  artist 
has  to  do  with  language  what  the  sight-seer  must 
do  with  a  telescope.  And  this  is  the  first  thing 
essential  in  any  kind  of  literary  composition.  It 
is  drudgery,  I  know;  but  there  is  no  escape  from 
it.  Neither  Tennyson,  nor  Rossetti,  nor  any- 
body else  of  great  importance  in  English  litera- 
ture has  been  able  to  escape  from  it  within  our 
own  day.  Long  practice  will  not  lighten  this 
labour  in  the  least.     Your  methods  may  become 


ON  COMPOSITION  51 

incomparably  more  skilful;  but  the  actual  volume 
of  work  will  always  be  about  the  same. 

I  imagine  that  some  of  you  might  ask:  *'  Is 
there  no  other  way  of  expressing  emotion  or  sen- 
timent than  that  which  you  have  been  trying  to 
describe  to  us?  You  say  that  the  highest  litera- 
ture is  emotional  expression;  but  there  is  nothing 
more  difficult  than  the  work  you  have  suggested; 
is  there  no  other  way?  " 

Yes,  there  is  another  way,  and  a  way  which  I 
sometimes  imagine  is  more  in  harmony  with  the 
character  of  the  Japanese  genius,  and  perhaps 
with  the  character  of  the  Japanese  language. 
But  it  is  just  as  difficult;  and  it  has  this  further 
disadvantage  that  it  requires  immense  experience, 
as  well  as  a  very  special  talent.  It  is  what  has 
been  called  the  impersonal  method,  though  I  am 
not  sure  that  this  title  is  a  good  one.  Very  few 
great  writers  have  been  able  to  succeed  at  it;  and 
I  think  that  these  few  have  mostly  been  French- 
men.    And  it  is  a  method  suitable  only  for  prose. 

An  emotion  may  be  either  expressed  or  sug- 
gested. If  it  is  difficult  to  express,  it  is  at  least 
quite  as  difficult  to  suggest;  but  if  you  can  sug- 
gest it,  the  suggestion  is  apt  to  be  even  more  pow- 
erful than  the  expression,  because  it  leaVes  much 
more  to  the  imagination.  Of  course  you  must  re- 
member that  all  literary  art  must  be  partly  sug- 
gestive— do  not  forget  that.     But  by  the  imper- 


52  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

sonal  method,  as  It  has  been  called,  It  becomes 
altogether  suggestive.  There  Is  no  expression  of 
emotion  by  the  writer  at  all  —  that  Is  to  say,  by 
the  narrator.  Nevertheless  the  emotion  comes  as 
you  read,  and  comes  with  extraordinary  power. 
There  Is  only  one  very  great  writer  of  our  own 
times  who  succeeded  perfectly  by  this  method^ — 
that  was  Guy  de  Maupassant. 

A  number  of  facts  may  be  related,  quite  dis- 
passionately and  plainly,  In  such  a  manner  as  to 
arouse  very  great  feeling;  or  a  conversation  may 
be  so  reported  as  to  convey  to  the  mind  the  exact 
feelings  of  the  speakers,  and  even  to  suggest  every 
look  or  action  without  any  description  at  all.  But 
you  will  see  at  once  that  the  great  difficulty  here 
lies  not  so  much  In  the  choice  of  the  word  values 
(although  that  also  is  Indispensable)  as  in  the 
choice  of  facts.  You  must  become  a  perfect 
judge  of  the  literary  worth  —  I  mean  the  emo- 
tional value  —  of  the  simplest  fact  in  itself. 
Now  a  man  who  can  make  such  judgments  must 
have  had  a  vast  experience  of  life.  He  must 
have  the  dramatic  faculty  greatly  developed.  He 
must  know  the  conversational  peculiarities  of  the 
language  of  all  classes.  He  must  be  able  to 
group  men  and  women  by  types.  And  I  doubt 
very  much  whether  any  person  can  do  this  while 
he  Is  young.  In  most  cases  the  talent  and  ca- 
pacity for  It  can  develop  only  in  middle  life,  be- 


ON  COMPOSITION  53 

cause  It  is  only  by  that  time  that  a  person  could 
have  the  proper  experience.  Therefore  I  could 
not  recommend  an  attempt  to  follow  this  method 
at  the  beginning  of  a  literary  career,  though  I 
should  strongly  recommend  every  conceivable  cul- 
tivation of  the  powers  which  may  render  it  pos- 
sible. Remember  that  in  addition  to  experience 
it  requires  a  natural  faculty  of  perception  as  vivid 
as  that  of  a  painter.  I  have  mentioned  one  name 
only  in, relation  to  this  kind  of  work,  but  I  should 
also  call  your  attention  to  such  stories  as  those  of 
Prosper  Merimee  —  ^'Carmen,"  "  Matteo  Fal- 
cone." Occasionally  you  will  find  stories  by 
Daudet,  especially  the  little  stories  of  the  war 
between  France  and  Germany,  showing  the 
method  in  question.  But  in  these  the  style  is 
usually  somewhat  fixed;  there  is  some  description 
attempted,  showing  a  personal  feeling.  In  the 
best  work  of  Maupassant  and  of  Merimee,  the 
personal  element  entirely  disappears.  There  is 
no  description,  except  In  some  conversational  pas- 
sages put  into  the  mouth  of  another  person;  there 
are  only  facts,  but  they  are  facts  that  "  take  you 
by  the  throat,"  to  use  a  familiar  expression. 

I  am  sure  that  you  are  not  yet  quite  satisfied 
by  these  definitions,  or  attempts  at  definitions,  of 
the  two  working  methods.  I  suppose  that  there 
are  among  you  some  good  writers  capable  of  writ- 
ing In  a  few  weeks,  or  even  In  a  few  days,  a  story 


54  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

which  if  published  in  a  Japanese  periodical, 
would  please  thousands  of  readers,  and  would 
bring  tears  perhaps  to  many  eyes.  I  do  not 
doubt  your  powers  to  please  the  public,  to  excite 
their  emotions,  to  strengthen  their  best  senti- 
ments; and  I  have  said  that  it  is  the  office  of  lit- 
erature to  do  this.  But  if  you  ask  me  whether 
I  would  call  this  work  literature,  I  should  answer 
"No;  that  is  journalism.  It  is  work  which  has 
been  quickly,  and  therefore  imperfectly,  done.  It 
Is  only  the  ore  of  literature;  it  is  not  literature  in 
the  true  sense."  But  you  will  say,  "  The  public 
calls  it  literature,  accepts  it  as  literature,  pays  for 
it  as  literature  — -  what  more  do  you  want?  " 

I  can  best  explain  by  an  illustration.  Next  to 
the  Greeks,  the  Arabs  were  perhaps  the  most 
skilful  of  poets  and  artists  in  describing  beauty  in 
words.  Every  part  of  the  body  had  a  beauty  of 
a  special  kind;  and  this  special  beauty  had  a  spe- 
cial name.  Furthermore  all  beauty  was  classified, 
ranked.  If  a  woman  belonged  to  the  first  rank  of 
beauty,  she  was  called  by  a  particular  name,  sig- 
nifying that  when  you  saw  her  the  first  time  you 
were  startled,  and  that  every  time  that  you  looked 
at  her  again  after  that,  she  seemed  to  become 
more  and  more  and  more  beautiful  until  you 
doubted  the  reality  of  your  own  senses.  A 
woman  who  belonged  only  to  the  second  class  of 
beauty  would  charm  you  quite  as  much  the  first 


ON  COMPOSITION  55 

time  that  you  saw  her;  but  after  that,  when  you 
looked  at  her  again  you  would  find  that  she  was 
not  so  beautiful  as  you  had  thought  at  first.  As 
for  women  of  the  third,  fourth,  fifth,  sixth  and 
seventh  classes  of  beauty,  it  is  only  necessary  to 
say  that  the  same  rule  held  good;  more  and  more 
defects  would  show  themselves,  according  to  the 
class,  upon  familiarity.  Now  the  difference  be- 
tween cheap  emotional  literature  of  the  journal- 
istic sort  and  true  literature,  is  exactly  of  the 
same  kind.  Cheap  literature  pays  best  for  the 
time  being,  and  great  literature  scarcely  pays  at 
all.  But  a  great  story  written  by  a  master  seems 
more  and  more  beautiful  every  time  that  you  read 
it  over  again;  and  through  generations  and  cen- 
turies it  seems  to  be  more  and  more  beautiful  to 
those  who  read  it.  But  cheap  literature,  although 
it  pleases  even  more  the  first  time  that  it  was  read, 
shows  defects  upon  a  second  reading,  and  more 
defects  upon  a  third  reading,  and  still  more  upon 
a  fourth  reading,  until  the  appearance  of  the  de- 
fects spoils  all  the  pleasure  of  the  reader,  and  he 
throws  away  the  book  or  the  story  in  disgust. 
So  do  the  pubhc  act  in  the  long  run.  What  pleases 
them  today  they  throw  away  tomorrow ;  and  they 
are  right  in  throwing  it  away,  because  it  does  not 
represent  careful  work. 

One  more  general  observation  may  be  made, 
though  you   should   remember   that   all   general 


56  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

statements  involve  exceptions.  But  bearing  this 
in  mind,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  what  are 
called  classics  in  any  language  are  classics  because 
they  represent  perfect  workmanship,  and  that 
books  which  are  not  classics  usually  represent  im- 
perfect workmanship. 


Ill 

The  next  subject  to  consider  will  be  construc- 
tion —  that  is  to  say,  the  architecture  of  the  com- 
position, the  first  rules  for  putting  the  thing  to- 
gether. 

The  most  common  difficulty  of  literary  work 
is  how  to  begin.  Everybody,  all  over  the  world, 
is  troubled  just  this  way.  A  boy  is,  to  whom  you 
give  a  subject  and  tell  him  to  write  about  it. 
How  shall  I  begin?  The  greatest  poets,  the 
greatest  essayists,  the  greatest  dramatists  are  not 
all  superior  to  this  weakness.  They  all  have  to 
ask  themselves  the  same  question  at  times.  The 
beginning  is  the  difficulty.  But  the  experienced 
learn  how  to  avoid  it.  I  believe  that  most  of 
them  avoid  the  trouble  of  beginning  by  very  sim- 
ple means. 

What  means  ? 

By  not  beginning  at  all. 

This  may  require  a  "little  explanation.     In  the 


ON  COMPOSITION  57 

old  days  there  were  rules  for  beginning,  just  as 
there  were  rules  for  everything  else.  Literature 
was  subjected  to  the  same  imposition  of  rhetoric 
as  were  other  compositions.  We  shall  have  more 
to  say  about  this  when  we  come  to  the  subject  of 
style.  In  history,  in  the  critical  essay,  above  all 
in  philosophy,  a  beginning  is  very  necessary. 
Scope  and  plan  must  be  determined  beforehand. 
You  must  know  what  you  want  to  say,  and  how 
you  Intend  to  say  it,  and  how  much  space  will  be 
required  for  saying  it.  Serious  and  solid  work 
of  the  purely  intellectual  kind  must  be  done  ac- 
cording to  a  fixed  and  logical  method.  I  am  sure 
that  I  need  not  explain  why.  But  It  Is  quite  other- 
wise In  regard  to  poetry  and  other  forms  of  emo- 
tional and  imaginative  literature.  The  poet  or 
the  story-teller  never  gets  the  whole  of  his  in- 
spiration at  once ;  it  comes  to  him  only  by  degrees, 
while  he  is  perfecting  the  work.  His  first  inspi- 
ration Is  only  a  sudden  flash  of  emotion,  or  the 
sudden  shock  of  a  new  idea,  which  at  once  awakens 
and  sets  Into  motion  many  confused  trains  of  other 
interrelated  emotions  and  Ideas.  It  ought  to  be 
obvious,  therefore,  that  the  first  inspiration  might 
represent  not  the  beginning  of  anything,  but  the 
middle  of  It,  or  the  end. 

I  was  startled  some  years  ago  In  Kyoto  while 
watching  a  Japanese  artist  drawing  horses.  He 
drew  the  horses  very  well;  but  he  always  began  at 


58  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

the  tail.  Now  it  is  the  western  rule  to  begin 
at  the  head  of  the  horse;  that  is  why  I  was  sur- 
prised. But  upon  reflection,  it  struck  me  that  it 
could  not  really  make  any  difference  whether  the 
artist  begins  at  the  head  or  the  tail  or  the  belly 
or  the  foot  of  the  horse,  if  he  really  knows  his 
business.  And  most  great  artists  who  really 
know  their  business  do  not  follow  other  people's 
rules.  They  make  their  own  rules.  Every  one 
of  them  does  his  work  in  a  way  peculiar  to  him- 
self; and  the  peculiarity  means  only  that  he  finds 
it  more  easy  to  work  in  that  way.  Now  the  very 
same  thing  is  true  in  literature.  And  the  ques- 
tion, "  How  shall  I  begin?  "  only  means  that  you 
want  to  begin  at  the  head  instead  of  beginning  at 
the  tail  or  somewhere  else.  That  is,  you  are  not 
yet  experienced  enough  to  trust  to  your  own  pow- 
ers. When  you  become  more  experienced  you 
will  never  ask  the  question;  and  I  think  that  you 
will  often  begin  at  the  tail  —  that  is  to  say,  you 
will  write  the  end  of  the  story  before  you  have 
even  thought  of  the  beginning. 

The  working  rule  is  this:  Develop  the  first 
idea  or  emotion  that  comes  to  you  before  you 
allow  yourself  to  think  about  the  second.  The 
second  will  suggest  itself,  even  too  much,  while 
you  are  working  at  the  first.  If  two  or  three 
or  four  valuable  emotions  or  ideas  come  to  you 
about  the  same  time,  take  the  most  vigorous  of 


ON  COMPOSITION  59 

them,  or  the  one  that  most  attracts  you  to  begin 
with,  unless  it  happens  to  be  also  the  most  diffi- 
cult. For  the  greater  number  of  young  writers 
I  should  say,  follow  the  line  of  least  resistance, 
and  take  the  easiest  work  first.  It  does  not  mat- 
ter at  all  whether  it  is  to  belong  to  the  middle  or 
to  the  end  or  to  the  beginning  of  a  story  or  poem. 
By  developing  the  different  parts  or  verses  sep- 
arately from  each  other,  you  will  soon  discover 
this  astonishing  fact,  that  they  have  a  tendency 
to  grow  together  of  themselves,  and  into  a  form 
different  from  that  which  you  first  intended,  but 
much  better.  This  is  the  inspiration  of  form  as 
construction.  And  if  you  try  always  to  begin  at 
the  beginning,  you  are  very  likely  to  miss  this  in- 
spiration. The  literary  law  is,  let  the  poem  or  the 
story  shape  itself.  Do  not  try  to  shape  it  before 
it  is  nearly  done.  The  most  wonderful  work  is 
not  the  work  that  the  author  shapes  and  plans;  it 
is  the  work  that  shapes  itself,  the  work  that  obliges 
him,  when  it  is  nearly  done,  to  change  it  all  from 
beginning  to  end,  and  to  give  it  a  construction 
which  he  had  never  imagined  at  the  time  of  be- 
ginning it. 

You  will  see  that  these  rules,  results  of  practical 
experience,  and  perfectly  well  known  to  men  of 
letters  in  every  country  of  Europe,  are  exactly 
the  opposite  of  the  rules  taught  in  schools  and 
universities.     The  student  is  always  told  how  to 


6o  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

begin,  and  always  puzzles  himself  about  a  begin- 
ning. But  the  men  who  make  literature,  the 
poets,  the  great  story-tellers  of  the  highest  rank 
—  they  never  begin.  At  least,  they  never  begin 
at  the  beginning  according  to  rule;  they  draw 
their  horses  from  the  hoof  or  the  tail  much  more 
often  than  from  the  head. 

That  is  all  that  I  have  to  say  about  construc- 
tion. You  may  think  this  is  very  little.  I  reply 
that  it  is  quite  enough.  Instinct  and  habit  will 
teach  all  the  rest;  and  they  are  better  masters 
than  all  grammarians  and  rhetoricians.  What  a 
man  cannot  learn  by  literary  instinct,  and  cannot 
acquire  by  literary  habit,  he  will  never,  never  be 
able  to  obtain  from  rules  or  books.  I  am  afraid 
that  some  of  these  opinions  may  seem  very 
heretical,  but  I  must  now  be  guilty  of  a  much 
greater  heresy,  when  I  introduce  you  to  my  ideas 
about  style.  I  think  —  in  fact  I  feel  quite  sure  — 
that  everything  which  has  been  written  upon  the 
subject  of  style  is  absolute  nonsense,  because  it 
mistakes  results  for  causes.  I  hold  that  such  writ- 
ing has  done  immense  injury  to  the  literary  stu- 
dent in  every  part  of  the  world;  and  I  propose  to 
prove  to  you  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  style. 


ON  COMPOSITION  6i 


IV 

I  suppose  you  will  ask  me,  "  Why  do  you  talk 
to  us  about  the  styles  of  Macaulay  and  Burke  and 
Ruskin,  if  you  do  not  believe  that  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  style?"  I  will  answer  that  it  is  my 
duty  in  lectures  to  explain  as  far  as  I  can  the  rea- 
sons why  different  writers  are  valued;  and  in  or- 
der to  do  this  I  must  use  the  word  "  style  "  be- 
cause it  is  customary,  and  because  it  indicates 
something.  But  the  general  notion  attaching  to 
that  something  is  wrong.  What  was  called 
*'  style "  no  longer  exists.  What  is  called 
**  style  "  ought  to  be  called  something  else  —  I 
should  say  "  character." 

If  you  look  at  the  dictionary  you  will  find  va- 
rious definitions  of  the  word  "  style,"  but  all  these 
can  be  reduced  to  two.  The  first,  or  general  style, 
is  simply  rhetorical;  it  means  the  construction  of 
sentences  according  to  a  complete  set  of  rules,  gov- 
erning the  form  and  proportion  of  every  part  of 
the  sentence.  This  once  was  style.  There  was 
a  time  when  everybody  was  supposed  to  write 
according  to  the  same  rules,  and  in  almost  exactly 
the  same  way.  We  might  expect  that  work  done 
by  different  individuals  according  to  such  rules 
would  be  all  very  much  alike;  and  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  there  was  a  great  likeness  in  the  styles  of 


62  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

French  and  English  writers  during  the  time  that 
classical  rules  of  composition  were  in  force.  I 
suppose  you  know  that  by  classical  I  mean  rules 
obtained  from  study  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  writ- 
ers. The  effort  of  Western  men  of  letters  dur- 
ing the  late  seventeenth  and  early  eighteenth  cen- 
turies was  to  Imitate  the  old  classics.  So  they 
had  rules  and  measures  for  everything,  for  every 
part  of  a  sentence,  and  for  the  position  of  every 
word.  Therefore  the  styles  did  greatly  resemble 
each  other.  In  France  the  similarity  I  refer  to 
was  greater  than  In  England,  the  French  being  a 
more  perfect  language,  and  much  closer  to  Latin 
than  English.  For  example,  you  would  find  It 
very  hard  to  distinguish  the  style  of  a  story  writ- 
ten by  Diderot  from  the  style  of  a  story  written 
by  Voltaire.  The  Encyclopedists,  as  they  are 
called,  wrote  very  much  after  the  same  fashion. 
But  a  fine  critic  could  detect  differences,  neverthe- 
less. For  no  matter  how  exact  the  rules  might 
be,  the  way  of  obeying  them  would  differ  accord- 
ing to  differences  of  character,  mental  character; 
I  need  scarcely  tell  you  that  no  two  minds  think 
and  feel  in  exactly  the  same  way.  These  differ- 
ences of  individual  thinking  and  feeling  necessarily 
give  a  slightly  different  tone  to  the  work  of  each 
writer,  even  in  the  most  rigid  period  of  classical 
style.  And  this  difference  of  tone  Is  what  we  call 
style  today  —  after  the  old  classical  rules  have 


ON  COMPOSITION  63 

Heen  given  up.  But  there  is  still  much  popular 
error  upon  the  subject  of  individual  style.  Peo- 
ple think  still  with  the  ideas  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. They  think  that  there  are  rules  for  indi- 
vidual style,  because  there  are  rules  for  classical 
style.  They  think  that  when  we  talk  of  the  style 
of  Macaulay  or  Froude,  of  Arnold  or  of  De 
Quincey,  we  mean  certain  rules  of  composition  by 
which  the  literary  method  of  one  man  can  be 
known  from  that  of  another.  I  should  like  to 
see  any  man  living  attempt  to  define  these  rules. 
The  authors  themselves  could  not  define  them. 
There  are  no  such  rules.  This  is  altogether  an 
error  —  and  a  very  serious  error.  The  differ- 
ences are  not  due  to  any  definable  rules  at  all; 
they  are  due  entirely  to  individual  differences  of 
character.  And  therefore  I  say  that  style,  in  the 
modern  meaning  of  the  word,  is  character. 

This  remains  to  be  proved.  Let  -^s  see  what 
any  author's  style  means  today.  It  means  that 
his  method  of  constructing  sentences  differs  ap- 
preciably from  the  method  in  which  other  men 
construct  their  sentences.  And  how  is  the  differ- 
ence shown?     Chiefly  in  three  ways: 

1.  By  a  certain  metrical  form  of  sentence  pe- 
culiar to  the  writer. 

2.  By  a  certain  quality  of  sound  —  sonority  — 
in  the  sentence,  not  due  merely  to  measure,  but  to 
a  sense  of  the  musical  value  of  words. 


64  TALKS  TO  .WRITERS 

3.  By  choice  of  words  giving  particular  im- 
pressions of  force  or  colour. 

Now  how  can  we  define  and  illustrate  these 
three  peculiarities  in  any  writer?  I  say  that  it 
cannot  be  done.  One  might,  as  Mr.  Saintsbury 
did,  take  some  sentences  from  the  Bible,  or  from 
any  volume  of  rich  prose,  and  arrange  the  sen- 
tences so  as  to  show  their  measure  and  accent,  by 
the  same  means  that  the  accent  and  measure  of 
poetry  can  be  shown.  But  even  thus  the  ca- 
dences could  not  be  shown.  In  order  to  show  the 
cadence  we  should  have  to  adopt  the  suggestion  of 
a  very  clever  American  man-of-letters,  Sidney 
Lanier,  and  set  the  sentence  to  music  —  I  mean 
write  it  with  a  musical  notation  above  every  word, 
in  addition  to  the  use  of  accents  and  feet.  So 
much  might  be  done.  But  there  would  still  re- 
main the  impossible  task  of  defining  an  author's 
conception  of  word  values.  Words  are  very  much 
like  lizards;  they  change  colour  according  to 
position.  Two  different  writers  using  the  same 
word  to  express  the  same  idea  can  give  to  that 
word  two  entirely  different  characters,  for  much 
depends  upon  the  place  of  the  word  in  the  sen- 
tence, or,  in  simpler  language,  upon  the  combina- 
tion to  which  it  belongs.  And  all  this  work  is 
more  or  less  unconscious  on  the  author's  part. 
He  chooses  not  by  rule,  but  by  feeling,  by  what 
is  called  the  literary  instinct.     Attempts   have 


ON  COMPOSITION  65 

been  made  to  define  differences  of  this  kind  as 
exhibited  in  the  styles  of  different  authors  by 
counting  and  classifying  the  verbs  and  adjectives 
and  adverbs  used  by  each.  These  attempts  re- 
sulted in  nothing  at  all.  The  same  thing  has  been 
tried  in  regard  to  poetry.  How  many  times 
Tennyson  uses  the  adjective  "  red "  and  how 
many  times  Swinburne  uses  the  adjective  '*  red  " 
may  be  interesting  to  know;  but  it  will  not  help 
us  in  the  least  to  understand  why  the  value  of  the 
same  adjective  as  Tennyson  uses  it  Is  quite  differ- 
ent from  the  value  it  obtains  as  used  by  Swin- 
burne. All  such  differences  must  be  due  to  psy- 
chological differences;  therefore  again  I  say  that 
style  is  character. 

And  here  let  me  utter  a  word  of  warning  as  to 
the  uselessness  of  trying  to  study  "  style "  in 
modern  English,  authors.  I  have  often  been 
asked  by  students  whom  they  should  read  for  the 
study  of  style  —  and  other  questions  of  that 
kind,  showing  that  they  did  not  understand  what 
style  really  is.  I  must  even  venture  to  say  that 
no  Japanese  student  who  has  not  spent  a  great 
many  years  away  from  Japan,  can  possibly  un- 
derstand differences  of  foreign  style.  The  rea- 
son must  be  obvious.  To  appreciate  differences 
of  style  in  foreign  authors,  you  must  have  an  ab- 
solutely perfect  knowledge  of  the  foreign  lan- 
guage;   you    must    know    all    its    capacities    of 


66  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

rhythm,  accent,  sonority,  and  colour.  You  must 
know  the  comparative  values  of  one  hundred 
thousand  words  —  and  that  for  you  is  impossible. 
Therefore,  so  far  as  foreign  literature  is  con- 
cerned, do  not  trouble  yourselves  trying  to  un- 
derstand anything  about  style  which  does  not 
depend  upon  old  forms  of  rhetoric.  And  even 
if  you  should  learn  enough  of  the  old  rules  to  un- 
derstand all  the  rules  and  sub-rules  for  the  con- 
struction of  an  eighteenth  century  sentence,  the 
"want  of  training  In  Greek  and  Latin  would  make 
that  knowledge  almost  useless  to  you.  Style  can 
be  studied  by  you  only  In  a  very  vague  way.  But 
I  hold  that  way  to  be  the  most  important,  because 
it  means  character.  What  I  have  just  said  is,  of 
course,  a  digression,  because  It  Is  of  Japanese  and 
not  of  English  composition  that  I  am  now  going 
to  speak. 

Here  you  must  recognize  that  I  am  sadly  ham- 
pered by  my  absolute  Ignorance  of  the  Japanese 
language.  There  are  many  things  that  I  should 
like  to  talk  to  you  about  which  It  is  out  of  my 
power  to  talk  of  for  this  reason.  But  there  are 
general  facts,  independent  of  differences  of  lan- 
guage; and  I  believe  that  by  keeping  to  those  I 
shall  not  speak  altogether  in  vain.  In  Japanese, 
or  in  any  other  language,  the  style  of  the  writer 
ought  to  represent  character,  if  any  style,  except 
a  purely  conventional  one,  be  possible.     And  now 


ON  COMPOSITION  67 

what  I  want  to  say  is  this:  If  any  writer  does  his 
best  to  perfect  his  work,  the  result  of  the  pains 
that  he  takes  will  be  style  in  the  true  sense.  That 
is,  his  work  will  have  an  individuality,  a  character 
about  it,  differentiating  it  from  all  other  work  on 
the  same  subject.  It  will  be  recognizably  his,  just 
as  much  as  his  face  or  his  way  of  talking  belongs 
to  him  and  not  to  anybody  else.  But  just  in  the 
same  degree  to  which  he  does  not  take  pains  there 
will  be  less  evidence  of  character,  therefore  less 
style.  The  work  of  many  clumsy  people  will  be 
found  to  have  a  general  family  resemblance. 
The  work  of  the  truly  energetic  and  painstaking 
will  be  found  to  differ  prodigiously.  The  greater 
the  earnestness  and  the  labour,  the  more  marked 
the  style.  And  now  you  will  see  what  I  am  com- 
ing at  —  that  style  is  the  outcome  of  character 
developed  through  hard  work.  Style  is  nothing 
else  than  that  in  any  country. 

Here  observe  another  fact.  In  the  general 
history  of  literature,  wherever  we  find  a  uniform- 
ity of  style,  we  find  no  progress,  and  no  very  great 
literary  achievements.  The  classic  period  of  the 
English  eighteenth  century  is  an  example.  But 
the  reverse  is  the  case  when  general  style  disap- 
pears and  individual  style  develops.  That  ipeans 
high  development,  originality,  new  ideas,  every- 
thing that  signifies  literary  progress.  Now  one 
bad  sign  in  the  English  literature  of  the  close  of 


68  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

the  present  century  —  that  Is,  the  English  litera- 
ture of  today  —  is  that  style  has  almost  disap- 
peared. There  is  a  general  style  again,  as  there 
was  in  the  first  part  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Out  of  a  hundred  English  novels  published  this 
month,  you  would  scarcely  be  able  to  tell  the  dif- 
ference between  one  author's  writing  and  an- 
other's. The  great  stylists  are  dead,  except 
Ruskin,  and  he  has  ceased  to  write.  The  world 
of  fiction  is  again  governed  by  a  set  of  rules 
which  everybody  follows;  and  novel  writing,  as 
well  as  essay  writing  (with  rare  exceptions),  has 
become  a  trade  instead  of  an  art.  Therefore 
nothing  great  appears,  and  nothing  great  is  likely 
to  appear  until  a  reaction  sets  in.  There  is  of 
course  the  extraordinary  genius  of  Kipling,  who 
keeps  aloof  from  all  conventions,  and  has  made 
new  styles  of  his  own  in  almost  every  department 
of  pure  literature.  But  there  is  no  other  to  place 
beside  him,  and  he  probably  owes  his  develop- 
ment quite  as  much  to  the  fact  that  he  was  born  in 
India  as  to  his  really  astonishing  talent. 

And  this  brings  me  to  the  last  section  of  this 
lecture  —  the  subject  of  language.  One  fact  of 
Kipling's  work,  and  not  the  least  striking  fact,  is 
the  astonishing  use  which  he  has  made  of  the  lan- 
guage of  the  people.  Although  a  consummate 
master  of  serious  and  dignified  style  when  he 
pleases  to  be,   he  never  hesitates   to   speak  the 


ON  COMPOSITION  69 

speech  of  the  streets  when  he  finds  that  it  serves 
his  purpose  better.  Well,  remember  that  Emer- 
son once  said,  "  The  speech  of  the  street  is  in- 
comparably more  forceful  than  the  speech  of  the 
academy." 


I  now  hope  that  you  will  have  a  little  patience 
with  me,  as  I  am  going  to  speak  against  conven- 
tions. I  believe  that  Japanese  literature  is  still 
to  a  great  extent  in  its  classic  state,  that  it  has  not 
yet  freed  itself  from  the  conventions  of  other  cen- 
turies, and  that  the  full  capacities  of  the  language 
are  not  expressed  In  its  modern  productions.  I 
believe  that  to  write  in  the  vernacular,  the  every 
day  speech  of  conversation  and  of  the  people,  is 
still  considered  vulgar.  And  I  must  venture  to 
express  the  hope  that  you  will  eventually  fight 
boldly  against  these  convictions.  I  think  that  It 
is  absolutely  essential.  I  do  not  believe  that  any 
new  Japanese  literature  can  come  into  existence, 
and  influence  life  and  thought  and  national  char- 
actic,  and  create  for  Japan  what  she  very  much 
needs,  literary  sympathy,  until  Japan  has  authors 
who  will  not  be  afraid  to  write  in  the  true  tongue 
of  the  people.  One  thing  is  certain,  that  the 
change  must  come.     Whoever  helps  It  to  come 


70  TALKS  TO  "WRITERS 

will  be  doing  his  country  an  inestimable  service, 
for  so  long  as  literature  Is  shaped  only  to  the  un- 
derstanding of  a  special  class  of  educated  per- 
sons, it  cannot  Influence  the  nation  at  all.  The 
educated  classes  of  any  country  represent  but  a 
very  small  portion  of  the  great  whole.  They 
must  be  the  teachers ;  yet  they  can  not  teach  In  the 
language  of  the  academy.  They  must  teach  in 
the  language  of  the  people,  just  as  Wycliffe,  and 
Chaucer,  and  other  great  Englishmen  of  letters 
once  found  it  necessary  to  do  in  order  to  create 
a  new  public  opinion.  Japan  will  certainly  need 
a  new  popular  literature;  and  although  you  may 
say  that  a  certain  class  of  popular  literature  is 
furnished  by  a  certain  class  of  writers,  I  would 
answer  that  a  great  popular  literature  cannot  be 
furnished  by  uneducated  persons,  or  by  persons 
without  a  large  range  of  knowledge;  It  must  be 
furnished  by  scholars,  or  at  least  by  men  of  taste, 
who  are  willing  to  speak  to  the  masses  In  their 
mother  tongue,  and  who  care  to  touch  the  hearts 
of  the  millions.  This  Is  the  true  object  of  litera- 
ture in  any  country.  And  so  far  as  literary  ex- 
pression is  power,  think  of  what  is  lost  by  allow- 
ing that  power  to  be  cramped  in  the  same  way 
that  English  literature  was  cramped  a  hundred 
years  ago.  Here  is  a  man  who  can  delight  ten 
or  twenty  thousand  readers  of  culture,  but  who 
can  not  be  more  than  a  name  to  the  nation  at 


ON  COMPOSITION  71 

large.  Here  is  another  man  who  can  speak  to 
forty  millions  of  people  at  once,  making  himself 
equally  well  understood  by  the  minister  in  his 
office  and  by  the  peasant  in  his  rice-field.  Who 
is  the  greatest  force?  Who  is  able  to  do  most 
for  the  future  of  his  country?  Who  represents 
the  greatest  power?  Certainly  it  is  not  the  man 
who  pleases  only  twenty  thousand  people.  It  is 
the  man  who,  like  the  young  English  poet  already 
mentioned,  can  speak  to  all  his  countrymen  in  the 
world  at  the  same  time,  and  with  such  power  that 
everybody  both  feels  and  understands.  Re- 
cently when  the  Russian  emperor  proposed  dis- 
armament of  the  European  powers,  our  young 
poet  sent  to  the  London  Times  a  Httle  poem 
about  a  bear  —  a  treacherous  bear.  There  is  no 
part  of  the  English  speaking  world  In  which  the 
poem  was  not  read;  and  I  am  quite  sure  that  it 
had  much  more  effect  on  English  public  opinion 
than  the  message  of  the  Emperor  of  Russia. 
That  is  power.  The  man  who  can  speak  to  a 
hundred  millions  of  people  may  be  stronger  than 
a  king.  But  he  must  not  speak  in  the  language  of 
the  academy. 


CHAPTER  III 

STUDIES    OF    EXTRAORDINARY    PROSE 

I 

THE  ART  OF  SIMPLE  POWER :    THE  NORSE  WRITERS 

In  speaking  upon  the  various  arts  of  prose,  I 
do  not  intend  to  confine  the  study  especially  to 
something  in  English  literature.  For  it  happens 
that  we  can  get  better  examples  of  the  great  art 
of  prose  writing  In  other  literatures  than  English, 
—  examples,  too,  which  will  better  appeal  to  the 
Japanese  student,  especially  as  some  of  them  bear 
resemblance  to  the  best  work  of  the  old  Japanese 
writers.  In  English  literature  it  is  not  very  easy 
to  find  examples  of  that  simplicity,  combined  with 
great  vividness,  which  is  to  be  found  in  the  old 
Japanese  narrative.  But  we  can  find  this  very 
often  In  the  work  of  the  Norse  writers;  and  their 
finest  pages,  translated  into  the  kindred  English 
tongue,  do  not  lose  the  extraordinary  charm  of 
the  original. 

Now  there  are  two  ways  of  writing  artistic 
prose  (of  course  there  are  many  different  meth- 
ods, but  all  can  be  grouped  under  two  heads), 

72 


THE  ART  OF  SIMPLE  POWER     73 

both  depending  a  good  deal  upon  the  character 
of  the  writer.     There  is  a  kind  of  work  of  which 
the  merit  Is  altogether  due  to  vivid  and  powerful 
senses,   well   trained   In   observation.     The   man 
who  sees  keenly  and  hears  keenly,  who  has  been 
well  disciplined  how  to  use  his  eyes  and  ears  both 
with  quickness  and  caution,  who  has  been  taught 
by  experience  the  value  of  accuracy  and  the  dan- 
ger of  exaggeration    (exaggeration  being,   after 
all,  only  an  incorrect  way  of  observing  and  think- 
ing),—  such  a  man,  if  he  can  write  at  all,  is  apt 
to  write  interestingly.     The  very  best  examples 
of  strong  simple  prose  are  pages  written  by  the 
old  Norsemen  who  passed  most  of  their  lives  in 
fighting  and  hunting.     We  have  here  the  result 
of  that  training  which  I  have   above  Indicated. 
The  man  who  knows  that  at  any  hour  of  the  day  a 
mistake  may  cost  his  life  and  the  lives  of  his  chil- 
dren, is  apt  to  be  a  man  of  exact  observation. 
He  is  also  apt  to  be  a  man  with  excellent  senses 
and  good  judgment;  for  the  near-sighted  or  deaf 
or  stupid  could  scarcely  have  existed  in  the  sort 
of  society  to  which  the  Norse  writers  belonged. 
And  I  imagine,  so  far  as  it  is  in  my  power  to 
judge,  that  some  of  the  old  Japanese  writers  have 
given  in  their  work  evidence  of  the  same  faculties 
of    perception    and    discrimination.     Today    we 
have  some  living  examples  of  European  writers 
whose   power    depends    entirely   upon    the    same 


74  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

qualities.  Modern  writers  of  this  kind  are  much 
less  simple,  it  is  true,  than  the  writers  whom  we 
are  about  to  consider;  they  have  been  educated 
in  modern  technical  schools  or  universities,  and 
their  education  has  given  to  their  work  a  certain 
colour  never  to  be  found  in  the  ancient  literature. 
But  one  or  two  writers  have  preserved  in  a  most 
extraordinary  way  the  best  qualities  of  the  old 
Norse  writers, —  modern  Norsemen,  or  at  least 
Scandinavians.  I  think  that  perhaps  the  best  is 
Bjornstjerne  Bjornson.  We  shall  have  occasion 
to  speak  of  him  again  at  another  time. 

The  other  method  of  writing  artistic  prose  is 
more  particularly  subjective;  it  depends  chiefly 
upon  the  man's  inner  sense  of  beauty, —  upon  his 
power  to  feel  emotionally,  and  to  express  the  emo- 
tion by  a  careful  choice  of  words.  Upon  this 
phase  of  prose  writing  we  need  not  now  dwell; 
we  shall  take  it  up  later  on.  Suflice  to  say  that  it 
does  not  at  all  depend  upon  the  possession  of 
well  developed  exterior  senses,  nor  upon  faculties 
of  quick  perception  and  discrimination;  indeed, 
some  of  its  greatest  masters  have  been  physically 
imperfect  men,  or  helpless  invalids. 

Now  let  us  take  an  example  of  the  old  Norse 
style  of  narrative.  It  dates  back  to  the  early 
part  of  the  thirteenth  century;  and  the  subject  is 
a  fight  in  a  little  island  on  the  coast  of  Iceland. 
There  was  trouble  at  the  time  about  a  Christian 


THE  ART  OF  SIMPLE  POWER     75 

bishop  called  Gudmund,  who  had  been  sent  out 
there.  Some  determined  to  kill  him,  others  re- 
solved to  stand  by  him, —  and  among  the  latter 
were  two  brave  friends,  Eyjolf  and  Aron.  The 
summary  opens  at  the  point  where  the  bishop's 
party  had  been  badly  handled,  and  nearly  every- 
body killed  except  the  two  friends.  Aron,  who 
was  the  weaker  of  the  two,  wanted  to  stay  on  the 
ground  and  fight  until  he  died.  Eyjolf  was  de- 
termined that  he  should  not,  so  he  played  a  trick 
upon  him  in  order  to  save  him.  The  whole  story 
is  told  in  the  Sturlunga  Saga.  I  hope  you  will 
be  interested  by  this;  because  it  seems  to  me  re- 
markably like  some  incidents  in  old  Japanese 
histories. 

Eyjolf  took  his  way  to  the  place  where  Aron  and 
Sturla  had  met,  and  there  he  found  Aron  sitting  with 
his  weapons,  and  all  about  were  lying  dead  men,  and 
wounded.  Eyjolf  asks  his  cousin  whether  he  can  move 
at  all.  Aron  says  that  he  can,  and  stands  on  his  feet; 
and  now  they  both  go  together  for  a  while  by  the  shore, 
till  they  come  to  a  hidden  bay ;  —  there  they  saw  a  boat 
ready  floating,  with  five  or  six  men  at  the  oars,  and  the 
bow  to  sea.  This  was  Eyjolf's  arrangement,  in  case  of 
sudden  need.  Now  Eyjolf  tells  Aron  that  he  means  the 
boat  for  both  of  them,  giving  out  that  he  sees  no  hope 
of  doing  more  for  the  Bishop  at  that  time. 

"  But  I  look  for  better  days  to  come,"  says  Eyjolf. 

'*  It  seems  a  strange  plan  to  me,"  says  Aron;  "for  I 
thought  that  we  should  never  part  from  Bishop  Gudmund 
in  this  distress.     There  is  something  behind  this,  and  I 


76  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

VOW  that  I  will  not  go,  unless  you  go  first  on  board." 

"  That  I  will  not,  Cousin,"  says  Eyjolf,  "  for  It  is 
shoal  water  here,  and  I  will  not  have  any  of  the  oars- 
men leave  his  oar  to  shove  her  off ;  and  it  is  far  too  much 
for  you  to  go  about  with  wounds  like  yours.  You  will 
have  to  go  on  board." 

"  Well,  put  your  weapons  in  the  boat,"  says  Aron, 
"  and  I  will  believe  you." 

Aron  now  goes  on  board,  and  Eyjolf  did  as  Aron  asked 
him.  Eyjolf  waded  after,  pushing  the  boat,  for  the  shal- 
lows went  far  out.  And  when  he  saw  the  right  time 
come,  Eyjolf  caught  up  a  battle-axe  out  of  the  stern  of 
the  boat,  and  gave  a  shove  to  the  boat  with  all  his  might. 

''  Good-bye,  Aron,"  says  Eyjolf;  "  we  shall  meet  again 
when  God  pleases." 

And  since  Aron  was  disabled  with  wounds  and  weary 
with  loss  of  blood,  it  had  to  be  even  so;  and  this  part- 
ing was  a  grief  to  Aron,  for  they  saw  each  other  no  more. 

Now  Eyjolf  spoke  to  the  oarsmen,  and  told  them  to 
row  hard,  and  not  let  Aron  come  back  again  to  Grimsey 
that  day,  and  not  for  many  a  day,  if  they  could  help  it. 

They  row  away  with  Aron  in  their  boat;  but  Eyjolf 
turns  to  the  shore  again,  and  to  a  boat-house  with  a  large 
ferry-boat  in  it  that  belonged  to  the  goodman  (farmer) 
Gnup.  And  at  the  same  nick  of  time  he  sees  the  Stur- 
lung  company  come  tearing  down  from  the  garth,  having 
finished  their  mischief  there.  Eyjolf  takes  to  the  boat- 
house,  with  his  mind  made  up  to  defend  it,  as  long  as  his 
doom  would  let  him.  There  were  double  doors  to  the 
boat-house,  and  he  puts  heavy  stones  against  them. 

Brand,  one  of  Siglwat's  followers,  a  man  of  good  con- 
dition, caught  a  glimpse  of  a  man  moving,  and  said  to 
his  companions  that  he  thought  he  had  made  out  Eyjolf 
Karrson  there,  and  that  they  ought  to  go  after  him. 
Sturla  was  not  on  the  spot.     There  were  nine  to  ten 


THE  ART  OF  SIMPLE  POWER     77 

together.  So  they  come  to  the  boat-house.  Brand  asks 
who  is  there,  and  Eyjolf  says  that  it  is  he. 

"  Then  you  will  please  to  come  out,  and  come  before 
Sturla,"  says  Brand. 

"  Will  you  promise  me  grace?  "  says  Eyjolf. 

"  There  will  be  little  of  that,"  says  Brand. 

"  Then  it  is  for  you  to  come  on,"  says  Eyjolf,  "  and 
for  me  to  guard,  and  it  seems  to  me  the  shares  are  ill 
divided." 

Eyjolf  had  a  coat  of  mail,  and  a  great  axe,  and  that 
was  all. 

Now  they  came  at  him,  and  he  made  a  good  and  brave 
defence ;  he  cut  their  pike-shafts  through  —  there  were 
stout  blows  on  both  sides.  And  in  that  bout  Eyjolf 
broke  his  axe-shaft,  and  caught  up  an  oar,  and  then  an- 
other, and  both  broke  with  his  blows.  And  in  the  bout 
Eyjolf  got  a  thrust  under  his  arm,  and  it  came  home. 
Some  say  that  he  broke  the  shaft  from  the  spearhead,  and 
let  it  stay  in  the  wound.  He  saw  now  that  his  defence 
was  ended.  Then  he  made  a  dash  out,  and  got  through 
them,  before  they  knew.  They  were  not  expecting  this; 
still,  they  kept  their  heads,  and  a  man  named  Mar  cut  at 
him  and  caught  his  ankle,  so  that  his  foot  hung  crippled. 
With  that  he  rolled  down  the  beach  and  the  sea  was  at 
the  flood.  In  such  plight  as  he  was  in,  Eyjolf  set  to  and 
swam,  and  swimming  he  came  twelve  fathoms  from  shore 
to  a  shelf  of  rock,  and  knelt  there;  and  then  he  fell  full 
length  upon  the  earth,  and  spread  his  hands  from  him, 
turning  to  the  East,  as  if  to  pray. 

Now  they  launched  the  boat  and  went  after  him.  And 
when  they  came  to  the  rock,  a  man  drove  a  spearhead 
into  him,  and  then  another;  but  no  blood  flowed  from 
either  wound.  So  they  turned  to  go  ashore  and  find 
Sturla,  and  tell  him  the  story  plainly  how  it  had  all 
fallen  out.     Sturla  held,  and  another  man  too,  that  this 


78  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

had  been  a  glorious  defence.     He  showed  that  he  was 
pleased  at  the  news. 

Now,  do  you  observe  anything  peculiar  about 
this  very  human  document?  I  think  you  must 
appreciate  the  power  of  it;  but  I  doubt  whether 
you  have  noticed  how  very  differently  from  mod- 
ern methods  that  power  has  been  employed. 

In  the  first  place,  notice  that  there  are  scarcely 
any  adjectives;  altogether  there  are  nine  or  ten  — 
suppose  we  say  ten.  There  are  two  and  a  half 
pages  of  about  three  hundred  words  in  a  page,  in 
the  extract  which  you  have  written.  That  is  to 
say,  there  are  about  seven  hundred  and  fifty 
words,  and  there  are  only  ten  adjectives  in  the 
whole  —  or  about  one  adjective  and  a  fraction  to 
every  hundred  words.  I  think  that  you  would 
have  to  look  through  thousands  and  thousands  of 
modern  English  books  before  you  could  find  any- 
thing like  this.  And  there  is  no  word  used  which 
could  be  left  out,  without  somewhat  spoiling  the 
effect.  This  may  not  be  grace;  but  it  is  certainly 
the  economy  of  force,  which  is  the  basis  of  all 
grace. 

Next,  observe  that  there  is  no  description  — 
not  a  particle  of  description.  Houses  are  men- 
tioned and  rocks  and  boats,  and  a  fight  is  nar- 
rated in  the  most  masterly  way;  yet  nothing  is 
described.  And  nevertheless  how  well  we  see 
everything  —  that  cold  bay  of  the  North  Sea  with 


THE  ART  OF  SIMPLE  POWER     79 

the  boat  floating  upon  it,  and  the  brave  man 
helping  his  wounded  cousin  on  board,  and  the 
unequal  struggle  at  the  boat-house,  during  which 
we  can  actually  hear  the  noise  of  the  oars  break- 
ing. There  is  no  picture  of  a  face;  yet  I  am 
quite  sure  that  you  can  see  the  face  of  that  brave 
man  in  every  episode  of  the  struggle.  The  Norse 
people  were  perhaps  not  the  first  to  discover  that 
description  was  unnecessary  in  great  writing. 
They  loved  it  in  their  poetry;  they  avoided  it  in 
their  prose.  But  it  requires  no  little  skill  to 
neglect  description  in  this  way, —  to  make  the 
actions  and  incidents  themselves  create  the  pic- 
ture. At  first  reading  this  might  seem  to  you 
simple  as  a  schoolboy's  composition;  but  there  is 
nothing  in  the  world  so  hard  to  do. 

Thirdly,  observe  that  there  is  no  emotion,  no 
partiality,  no  sympathy  expressed.  It  is  true  that 
in  one  place  Eyjolf  is  spoken  of  as  having  made 
*'  a  good  and  brave  defence,"  but  the  Norsemen 
never  spoke  badly  of  their  enemies;  and  if  their 
greatest  enemy  could  fight  well,  they  gave  him 
credit  for  It,  not  as  a  matter  of  sympathy  but  as 
a  matter  of  truth.  Certainly  the  end  of  the  nar- 
ration shows  us  that  the  adjectives  "  good  "  and 
"  brave  "  do  not  imply  any  sympathy  at  all;  for 
the  lord  of  the  men  who  killed  Eyjolf  was  pleased 
to  hear  of  the  strong  fight  that  he  made.  Notice 
this  point  carefully.     Such  men  found  no  pleasure 


8o  TALKS  TO  WRITERS   . 

In  killing  cowards;  they  thought  It  glorious  only 
to  kill  a  good  fighter  in  a  good  fight.  The  lord 
is  glad  because  his  men' killed  somebody  well 
worth  killing.  So,  as  I  have  already  said,  there 
is  not  one  particle  of  personal  emotion  in  the 
whole  story.  Nevertheless  what  emotion  it 
makes  within  the  reader!  And  what  a  wonderful 
art  this  is  to  create  emotion  in  the  reader's  mind 
by  suppressing  It  altogether  in  the  narration! 
This  is  the  supreme  art  of  realism, —  about 
which  you  may  have  heard  a  great  deal  in  these 
last  few  years.  I  know  of  only  one  writer  of  the 
nineteenth  century  who  had  this  same  realistic 
power, —  the  late  French  story-teller  de  Maupas- 
sant. In  the  days  before  his  brain  weakened  and 
madness  destroyed  his  astonishing  faculties,  he 
also  could  create  the  most  powerful  emotion  with- 
out the  use  of  a  single  emotional  word  or  sug- 
gestion. Some  day  I  shall  try  to  give  you  in 
English  a  short  specimen  of  his  power. 

Now  If  you  will  consider  these  three  things  — 
the  scarcity  of  adjectives,  the  absence  of  descrip- 
tion, and  the  suppression  of  emotion,  I  think  that 
you  will  be  able  to  see  what  a  wonderful  bit  of 
writing  that  was.  But  it  is  no  more  than  a  single 
example  out  of  a  possible  hundred.  And  in  a 
certain  way  the  secret  of  It  Is  the  same  which  gave 
such  surprise  and  delight  In  modern  times  to  the 
readers  of  Hans  Andersen.     This  matchless  teller 


THE  ART  OF  SIMPLE  POWER     8i 

of  fairy  tales  and  "  wonder-stories  "  full  of  deep 
philosophical  meanings,  was,  as  you  know,  a 
Norseman, —  even  by  blood  a  descendant  of  those 
same  men  who  could  write  about  the  story  of 
Eyjolf  in  the  thirteenth  century.  I  want  to  give 
you  now  another  little  story  of  the  same  kind 
from  the  old  Icelandic  saga  of  Njal.  You  will 
discover  all  the  same  qualities  in  It.  The  story 
told  might  almost  be  Japanese, —  an  incident  of 
the  old  fierce  custom  of  vengeance.  Among  the 
Norsemen,  as  among  the  men  of  old  Japan,  the 
brother  was  bound  to  avenge  the  death  of  the 
brother;  the  father  had  to  avenge  his  son;  every- 
body killed  had  some  blood  relative  to  avenge 
him.  If  there  was  no  man  to  do  this,  there  would 
often  appear  a  brave  woman  willing  and  capable 
of  doing  it,  and  in  the  wars  of  Katakiuchi  there 
were  many  brave  things  done  on  both  sides,  even 
by  the  little  boys  and  girls.  In  this  case  the  vic- 
tims are  a  little  boy  and  his  grandparents.  They 
are  locked  in  a  wooden  house  that  has  been  sur- 
rounded by  their  enemies  and  set  on  fire.  There 
are  many  people  in  the  house,  and  they  all  are 
about  to  be  destroyed  without  pity, —  for  this  is 
a  fight  between  two  clans,  and  there  are  many 
deaths  to  be  avenged.  But  suddenly  the  leader 
of  the  conquering  party  remembers  that  the  old 
man  inside  used  to  be  his  teacher  (I  think  there  Is 
a  Japanese  incident  of  almost  exactly  the  same 


82  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

kind  in  the  story  of  a  castle  siege).  Now  we 
will  make  the  old  northern  story-teller  relate  the 
rest. 

Then  Flos!  went  to  the  door,  and  called  out  to  Njal, 
and  said  he  would  speak  with  him  and  Bergthord. 

Now  Njal  does  so,  and  Flosi  said,  "  I  will  offer  thee, 
master  Njal,  leave  to  go  out;  for  it  is  unworthy  that  thou 
shouldst  burn  indoors." 

"  I  will  not  go  out,"  said  Njal,  *'  for  I  am  an  old  man, 
and  little  fitted  to  avenge  my  sons;  but  I  will  not  live  in 
shame." 

Then  Flosi  said  to  Bergthord :  "  Come  thou  out, 
housewife;  for  I  will  for  no  sake  burn  thee  indoors." 

"I  was  given  away  to  Njal  young,"  said  Bergthord; 
"  and  I  promised  him  this, —  that  we  should  both  share 
the  same  fate." 

After  that  they  both  went  back  into  the  house. 

"What  council  shall  we  now  take?"  said  Bergthord. 

"  We  will  go  to  our  bed,"  says  Njal,  "  and  lay  us 
down;  I  have  long  been  eager  for  rest." 

Then  she  said  to  the  boy  Thord,  Kuri's  son:  "Thee 
will  I  take  out,  and  thou  shalt  not  burn  in  here." 

"  Thou  hast  promised  me  this,  grandmother,"  says 
the  boy,  "  that  we  should  never  part  so  long  as  I  wished 
to  be  with  thee;  but  methinks  it  is  much  better  to  die 
with  thee  and  Njal  than  to  live  after  you." 

Then  she  bore  the  boy  to  her  bed,  and  Njal  spoke  to 
his  stew^ard  and  said: 

"  Now  thou  shalt  see  where  we  lay  us  down, —  for  I 
mean  not  to  stir  an  inch  hence,  whether  reek  or  burning 
smart  me,  and  so  thou  wilt  be  able  to  guess  where  to 
look  for  our  bones." 

He  said  that  he  would  do  so. 


THE  ART  OF  SIMPLE  POWER     83 

There  had  been  an  ox  slaughtered,  and  the  hide  lay 
there.  Njal  told  the  steward  to  spread  the  hide  over 
them,  and  he  did  so. 

So  there  they  lay  down  both  of  them  in  their  bed,  and 
put  the  boy  between  them.  Then  they  signed  them- 
selves and  the  boy  with  the  sign  of  the  cross,  and  gave 
over  their  souls  unto  God's  hand;  and  that  was  the  last 
word  that  men  heard  them  utter. 


There  are  about  four  adjectives  in  all  this;  and, 
as  in  the  former  case,  there  is  no  description  and 
no  sympathy, —  no  sentiment.  Very  possibly  this 
is  an  absolutely  true  incident,  the  steward,  who 
was  allowed  to  go  out,  having  been  afterward 
able  to  make  a  faithful  report  of  what  the  old 
people  and  the  boy  said  in  the  house.  The  young 
men  said  other  things,  full  of  fierce  mockery, — 
things  that  manifest  a  spirit  totally  unlike  any- 
thing in  modern  times.  They  stood  up  to  be 
burned  or  to  break  their  way  out  if  a  chance 
offered.  One  of  the  sons  seeing  the  father  lying 
down  in  the  bed  sarcastically  observed,  *'  Our 
father  goes  early  to  bed, —  and  that  is  what  was 
to  be  looked  for,  as  he  is  an  old  man."  This 
grewsome  joke  shows  that  the  young  man  would 
have  preferred  the  father  to  die  fighting.  But  the 
old  folks  were  busy  enough  in  preparing  the  little 
boy  for  death.  It  is  a  terrible  story, —  an  atro- 
ciously cruel  one;  but  it  shows  great  nobility  of 
character  in  the  victims,  and  the  reader  is  moved 


84  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

in  spite  of  himself  by  this  most  simple  relation 
of  fact. 

Now  perhaps  you  will  think  that  this  simple 
style  can  only  produce  such  effects  when  the  sub- 
ject matter  of  the  narrative  is  itself  of  a  terrible 
or  startling  or  extraordinary  character.  I  am 
quite  sure  that  this  is  not  true,  because  I  find  ex- 
actly the  same  style  in  such  a  modern  novel  as 
"  Synnove  Solbakken  "  by  Bjornson,  and  I  find  it 
in  such  fairy  tales  of  Andersen  as  "  The  Ugly 
Duckling  "  and  "  The  Little  Mermaid."  These 
simplest  subjects  are  full  of  wonder  and  beauty 
for  the  eyes  that  can  see  and  the  mind  that  can 
think;  and  with  such  an  eye  and  such  a  mind,  the 
simple  style  is  quite  enough.  How  trifling  at 
times  are  the  subjects  of  Andersen's  stories  —  a 
child's  toy,  a  plant  growing  in  the  field,  a  snow 
image,  made  by  children  somewhat  as  we  make  a 
snow  daruma  in  the  farmyard,  a  rose-bush  under 
the  window.  It  would  be  nonsense  to  say  that 
here  the  interest  depends  upon  the  subject  mat- 
ter I  In  such  a  story  as  '^The  Little  Tin  Soldier  " 
we  are  really  affected  almost  as  much  as  by  the 
story  of  Eyjolf  in  the  old  saga  —  simply  because 
the  old  saga-teller  and  the  modern  story-teller 
wrote  and  thought  very  much  in  the  same  way. 
Or  take  another  subject,  of  a  more  complicated 
character,  the  story  of  the  "  Nightingale  of  the 
Emperor  of  China  and  the  Nightingale  of  the 


THE  ART  OF  SIMPLE  POWER     85 

Emperor  of  Japan."  There  is  a  great  deal  more 
meaning  here  than  the  pretty  narrative  itself 
shows  upon  the  surface.  The  whole  idea  is  the 
history  of  our  human  life, —  the  life  of  the  artist, 
and  his  inability  to  obtain  just  recognition,  and 
the  power  of  the  humbug  to  ignore  him.  It  is 
a  very  profound  story  indeed;  and  there  are  pages 
in  it  which  one  can  scarcely  read  with  dry  eyes. 
It  affects  us  both  intellectually  and  emotionally  to 
an  extraordinary  degree;  but  the  style  is  still  the 
style  of  the  old  sagas.  Of  course  I  must  acknowl- 
edge that  Andersen  uses  a  few  more  adjectives 
than  the  Icelandic  writers  did,  but  you  will  find, 
on  examining  him  closely,  that  he  does  not  use 
them  when  he  can  help  it.  Now  the  other  style 
that  I  was  telling  you  about, —  the  modern  artis- 
tic style,  uses  adjectives  almost  as  profusely  as 
in  poetry.  I  do  not  wish  to  speak  badly  of  it; 
but  scarcely  any  writer  who  uses  it  has  been  able 
to  give  so  powerful  an  impression  as  the  Norse 
writers  who  never  used  it  at  all. 

In  the  simple  style  there  is  something  of  the 
genius  of  the  race.  After  all,  any  great  literary 
manner  must  have  its  foundation  in  race  char- 
acter. The  manner  that  I  have  been  describing 
is  an  evidence  of  northern  race  character  at  its 
very  best.  Quite  incidentally  I  may  observe  here 
that  another  northern  race,  which  has  produced 
a  literature  only  in  very  recent  times,  shows  some- 


86  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

thing  of  the  same  simple  force  of  plain  style, —  I 
mean  Russian  literature.  The  great  modern  Rus- 
sian writers,  most  of  all,  resemble  the  old  Norse 
writers  In  their  management  of  effects  with  few 
words.  But  my  purpose  in  this  lecture  has  been 
especially  to  suggest  to  you  a  possible  resemblance 
between  old  Japanese  literary  methods  and  these 
old  northern  literary  methods.  I  imagine  that 
the  northern  simple  art  accords  better  with  Japan- 
ese genius  than  ever  could  the  more  elaborate 
forms  of  literature,  based  upon  the  old  classic 
studies. 


^11 

SIR   THOMAS    BROWNE 

In  our  first  lecture  on  prose  style  you  will  rec- 
ollect the  extraordinary  simplicity  of  the  exam- 
ples given  from  some  of  the  old  Norse  writers. 
And  you  will  have  observed  the  lasting  strength 
of  that  undecorated  native  simplicity.  Today  I 
am  going  to  talk  to  you  about  a  style  which  offers 
the  very  greatest  possible  contrast  and  opposition 
to  the  style  of  the  Norse  writers, —  a  style  which 
represents  the  extreme  power  of  great  classical 
culture,  vast  scholarship,  enormous  reading, —  a 
style  which  can  be  enjoyed  only  by  scholars,  which 


SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  87 

never  could  become  popular,  and  which  neverthe- 
less has  wonderful  merit  in  its  way.  I  do  not 
offer  you  examples  with  any  idea  of  encouraging 
you  to  imitate  it.  But  it  is  proper  that  you 
should  be  able  to  appreciate  some  of  its  fine  qual- 
ities and  to  understand  its  great  importance  in 
the  history  of  English  literature.  I  mean  the 
style  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne. 

I  have  said  that  the  influence  of  this  style  has 
been  very  great  upon  English  literature.  Before 
we  go  any  further,  allow  me  to  explain  this  in- 
fluence. Sir  Thomas  Browne  was  the  first  great 
English  writer  who  made  an  original  classic  style. 
By  classic  style  I  mean  an  English  prose  style 
founded  upon  a  profound  study  of  the  ancient 
classic  writers,  Greek  and  Latin,  and  largely  col- 
oured and  made  melodious  by  a  skilful  use  of 
many-syllabled  words  derived  from  the  antique 
tongues.  There  were  original  styles  before.  Sir 
Thomas  Malory  made  a  charming  innovation  in 
style.  Lyly  made  a  new  style,  too,  —  a  style 
imitated  from  Spanish  writers,  extravagantly 
ornamented,  extravagantly  complicated,  fantastic, 
artificial,  tiresome, —  the  famous  style  called 
Euphuism.  We  shall  have  to  speak  of  Euphuism 
at  another  time.  It  also  was  a  great  influence 
during  a  short  period.  But  neither  the  delight- 
ful prose  poetry  of  Sir  Thomas  Malory  nor  the 
extravagant  and  factitious  style  of  Lyly  has  any- 


[88  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

thing  in  common  with  the  style  of  Sir  Thomas 
Browne.  Sir  Thomas  Browne  imitated  nobody 
except  the  best  Latin  and  Greek  writers,  and  he 
imitated  them  with  an  art  that  no  other  English- 
man ever  approached.  Moreover,  he  did  not  imi- 
tate them  slavishly;  he  managed  always  to  re- 
main supremely  original,  and  because  he  was  a 
true  prose  poet,  much  more  than  because  he  imi- 
tated the  beauties  of  the  antique  writers,  he  was 
able  to  influence  English  prose  for  considerably 
more  than  two  hundred  years.  Indeed,  I  think 
we  may  say  that  his  influence  still  continues;  and 
that  if  he  does  not  affect  style  today  as  markedly 
as  he  did  a  hundred  years  ago,  it  is  only  because 
one  must  be  a  very  good  scholar  to  do  anything 
in  the  same  direction  as  that  followed  by  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  and  our  very  good  scholars  of 
today  do  not  write  very  much  in  the  way  of  essays 
or  of  poetry.  The  first  person  of  great  eminence 
powerfully  affected  by  Sir  Thomas  Browne  was 
Samuel  Johnson.  You  know  that  Johnson  af- 
fected the  literature  of  the  eighteenth  century 
most  powerfully,  and  even  a  good  deal  of  the  lit- 
erature of  the  early  nineteenth  century.  But 
Johnson  was  a  pupil  of  Browne,  and  a  rather 
clumsy  pupil  at  that.  He  was  not  nearly  so  great 
a  scholar  as  Sir  Thomas  Browne;  he  was  much 
less  broad-minded  —  that  is  to  say,  capable  of 
liberal  and  generous  tolerance,   and  he  did  not 


SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  89 

have  that  sense  of  beauty  and  of  poetry  which 
distinguished    Sir    Thomas    Browne.     He    made 
only  a  very  bad  imitation  of  Sir  Thomas,  exag- 
gerating the  eccentricities  and  missing  the  rare 
and  dehcate  beauties.     But  the  literary  links  be- 
tween Browne  and  the  eighteenth  century  are  very 
easily  estabhshed,  and  it  is  certain  that  Browne  in- 
directly helped  to  form  the  literary  prose  of  that 
period.     Thus  you  will  perceive  how  large  a  fig- 
ure in  the  history  of  English  literature  he  must  be. 
He  was  born  in   1605,  and  he  died  in   1682. 
Thus  he  belongs  to  the  seventeenth  century,  and 
his  long  life  extends  from  nearly  the  beginning  to 
within  a  few  years  of  the  end.     We  do  not  know 
very  much  about  him.     He  was  educated  at  Ox- 
ford, and  studied  medicine.     Then  he  established 
himself  as  a  doctor  in  the  English  country  town 
of  Norwich,  famous  in  nursery-rhyme  as  the  town 
to  which  the  man-in-the-moon  asked  his  way.     In 
the  leisure  hours  of  his  professional  life  he  com- 
posed, at  long  intervals,  three  small  books,  re- 
spectively entitled  "  Religio  Medici,"   "  Pseudo- 
doxia,"  and  "  Hydriotaphia."     Neither  the  first, 
which  is  a  treatise  upon  humanism  in  its  relation 
to  life  and  religion,  nor  the  second,  which  is  a 
treatise  upon  vulgar  errors,  need  occupy  us  much 
for  the  present;  they  do  not  reveal  his  style  in  the  • 
same  way  as  the  third  book.     This  "Hydriota- 
phia "  is  a  treatise  upon  urn-burial,  upon  the  habit 


90  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

of  the  ancients  of  burying  or  preserving  the  ashes 
of  their  dead  In  urns  of  pottery  or  of  metal.  It 
is  from  this  book  that  I  am  going  to  make  some 
quotations.  During  Browne's  lifetime  he  was 
recognized  as  a  most  wonderful  scholar  and  ami- 
able man,  but  there  were  only  a  few  persons  who 
could  appreciate  the  finer  beauties  of  his  literary 
work.  Being  personally  liked,  however,  he  had 
no  difficulty  in  making  a  social  success;  he  was 
able  to  become  tolerably  rich,  and  he  was  created 
a  knight  by  King  Charles  II.  After  his  death  his 
books  and  manuscript  were  sold  at  auction;  and 
fortunately  they  were  purchased  afterwards  for 
the  British  Museum.  The  whole  of  his  work,  In- 
cluding some  posthumous  essays,  makes  three  vol- 
umes in  the  Bohn  Library.  Better  editions  of 
part  of  the  text,  however,  have  been  recently  pro- 
duced; and  others  are  in  preparation.  It  is  prob- 
able that  Sir  Thomas  Browne  will  be  studied  very 
much  again  within  the  next  fifty  years. 

The  book  about  urn-burial  really  gives  the  stu- 
dent the  best  idea  of  Sir  Thomas  Browne.  No 
other  of  his  works  so  well  displays  his  learning 
and  his  sense  of  poetry.  Indeed,  even  in  these 
days  of  more  advanced  scholarship,  the  learning 
of  Sir  Thomas  Browne  astonishes  the  most 
learned.  He  quotes  from  a  multitude  of  authors, 
scarcely  known  to  the  ordinary  student,  as  well  as 
from  almost  every  classic  author  known;  likewise 


SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  91 

from  German,  Italian,  Spanish  and  Danish  writ- 
ers; likewise  from  hosts  of  the  philosophers  of  the 
Middle  Ages  and  the  fathers  of  the  church. 
Everything  that  had  been  written  about  science 
from  antiquity  up  to  the  middle  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  he  would  appear  to  have  read, — 
botany,  anatomy,  medicine,  alchemy,  astrology; 
and  the  mere  list  of  authorities  cited  by  him  is  ap- 
palling. But  to  discover  a  man  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  who  had  read  all  the  books  in  the 
western  world  is  a  much  less  surprising  fact  than 
to  find  that  the  omnivorous  reader  remembered 
what  he  read,  digested  it,  organized  it,  and  every- 
where discovered  in  it  beauties  that  others  had  not 
noticed.  Scholarship  in  itself  is  not,  however, 
particularly  interesting;  and  the  charge  of  pedan- 
try, of  a  needless  display  of  learning,  might  have 
been  brought  against  Sir  Thomas  Browne  more 
than  once.  Today,  you  know,  it  is  considered  a 
little  vulgar  for  a  good  scholar  to  make  quota- 
tions from  Greek  and  Latin  authors  when  writ- 
ing an  English  book.  He  Is  at  once  accused  of 
trying  to  show  off  his  knowledge.  But  even  to- 
day, and  while  this  is  the  rule,  no  great  critic 
will  charge  Sir  Thomas  Browne  of  pedantry. 
He  quotes  classical  authors  extensively  only 
while  he  is  writing  upon  classical  subjects;  and 
even  then,  he  never  quotes  a  name  or  a  fact  with- 
out producing  some  unexpected   and  surprising 


92  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

effect.  Moreover,  he  very  seldom  cites  a  Latin 
or  Greek  text,  but  puts  the  Latin  or  Greek 
thought  into  English.  Later  on  I  shall  try  to 
show  you  what  are  the  intrinsic  demerits  of  this 
style,  as  well  as  its  merits;  but  for  the  present  let 
us  study  a  few  quotations.  They  will  serve  bet- 
ter than  anything  else  to  show  what  a  curious 
writer  he  is. 

In  the  little  book  about  urn-burial,  the  first 
chapter  treats  generally  about  the  burial  customs 
of  all  nations  of  antiquity  —  indeed  I  might  say 
of  all  nations  in  the  world,  together  with  the 
philosophical  or  religious  reasons  for  different 
burial  customs;  and  yet  in  the  original  book  all 
this  is  told  in  about  twenty  pages.  You  will  see 
therefore  that  Sir  Thomas  is  not  prolix;  on  the 
contrary,  he  presses  his  facts  together  so  power- 
fully as  to  make  one  solid  composition  of  them. 
Let  us  take  a  few  sentences  from  this  chapter: 

Some  being  of  the  opinion  of  Thales,  that  water  was 
the  orginal  of  all  things,  thought  it  most  equal  to  submit 
unto  the  principle  of  putrefaction,  and  conclude  in  a 
moist  relentment.  Others  conceived  it  most  natural  to 
end  in  fire,  as  due  unto  the  master  principle  in  the  com- 
position, according  to  the  doctrine  of  Heraclitus;  and 
therefore  heaped  up  large  piles,  more  actively  to  waft 
them  toward  that  element,  whereby  they  also  declined  a 
visible  degeneration  into  worms,  and  left  a  lasting  parcel 
of  their  composition.  .  .  .  But  the  Chaldeans,  the  great 
idolaters  of  fire,  abhorred  the  burning  of  their  carcasses, 


SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  93 

as  a  pollution  of  that  deity.  The  Persian  magi  declined 
it  upon  the  like  scruple,  and  being  only  solicitous  about 
their  bones,  exposed  their  flesh  to  the  prey  of  birds  and 
dogs.  And  the  Parsees  now  of  India,  which  expose  their 
bodies  unto  vultures,  and  endure  not  so  much  as  feretra 
or  biers  of  wood,  the  proper  fuel  of  fire,  are  led  on  with 
such  niceties.  But  whether  the  ancient  Germans,  who 
burned  their  dead,  held  any  such  fear  to  pollute  their 
deity  of  Herthus,  or  the  Earth,  we  have  no  authentic 
conjecture. 

The  Egyptians  were  afraid  of  fire,  not  as  a  deity,  but 
a  devouring  element,  mercilessly  consuming  their  bodies, 
and  leaving  too  little  of  them;  and  therefore  by  precious 
embalmments,  depositure  in  dry  earths,  or  handsome  en- 
closure in  glasses,  contrived  the  notablest  ways  of  integral 
conservation.  And  from  such  Egyptian  scruples,  imbibed 
by  Pythagoras,  it  may  be  conjectured  that  Numa  and  the 
Pythagorical  sect  first  waved  (modern  waived)  the  fiery 
solution. 

The  Scythians,  who  swore  by  wind  and  sword,  that  is, 
by  life  and  death,  were  so  far  from  burning  their  bodies, 
that  they  declined  all  interment,  and  made  their  graves 
in  the  air;  and  the  Icthyophagi,  or  fish-eating  nations 
about  Egypt,  affected  the  sea  for  their  grave,  thereby  de- 
clining visible  corruption,  and  restoring  the  debt  of  their 
bodies.  Whereas  the  old  heroes,  in  Homer,  dreaded 
nothing  more  than  water  or  drowning;  probably  upon  the 
old  opinion  of  the  fiery  substance  of  the  soul,  only  ex- 
tlnguishable  by  that  element;  and  therefore  the  poet  em- 
phatically implieth  the  total  destruction  in  this  kind  of 
death,  which  happened  to  Ajax  Oileus. 

So  on,  page  after  page  crammed  with  facts 
and  comments.     He  mentions  even  the  Chinese 


94  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

burial  customs  —  so  little  known  to  Europeans  of 
the  seventeenth  century;  and  his  remarks  upon 
them  are  tolerably  correct,  considering  all  the 
circumstances.  You  will  acknowledge  that  a  dry 
subject  is  here  most  interestingly  treated;  this  is 
the  art  that  can  give  life  to  old  bones.  But  the 
main  thing  is  the  style, —  remember  we  are  still 
early  in  the  seventeenth  century,  in  the  year  1658 ; 
see  how  dignified,  how  sonorous,  how  finely  pol- 
ished are  these  rolling  sentences,  all  of  which  rise 
and  fall  with  wave-like  regularity  and  roundness. 
You  feel  that  this  is  the  scholar  who  writes, — 
the  scholar  whose  ear  has  been  trained  to  the 
long  music  of  Greek  and  Latin  sentences.  And 
even  when  he  uses  words  now  obsolete  or  changed 
in  meaning,  you  can  generally  know  very  well 
from  the  context  what  is  meant.  For  instance, 
"  relentment,"  which  now  has  no  such  meaning, 
is  used  in  the  sense  of  dissolution,  and  ''  con- 
clude," of  which  the  meaning  is  now  most  com- 
monly to  finish  in  the  literary  sense,  this  old 
doctor  uses  in  the  meaning  of  to  end  life,  to  finish 
existence.  But  you  do  not  need  to  look  at  the 
glossary  at  the  end  of  the  book  in  order  to  know 
this. 

We  might  look  to  such  a  writer  for  all  the  arts 
of  finished  prose  known  to  the  best  masters  of 
today;  and  we  should  find  them  in  the  most  elab- 
orate  perfection.     The  use   of   antithesis,   long 


SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  95 

afterwards  made  so  famous  by  Macaulay,  was 
used  by  Browne  with  quite  as  much  art,  and  per- 
haps with  even  better  taste.  Certainly  his  similes 
are  quite  as  startling: 

Though  the  funeral  pyre  of  Patroclus  took  up  an  hun- 
dred foot,  a  piece  of  an  old  boat  burnt  Pompey;  and  if 
the  burthen  of  Isaac  were  sufficient  for  an  holocaust,  a 
man  may  carry  his  own  pyre. 

The  subject  Is  always  made  interesting,  whether 
the  writer  be  speaking  of  mathematics  or  of  gar- 
dens, of  graves  or  of  stars.  Hear  him  when  he 
begins  on  the  subject  of  ghosts  —  how  curious  the 
accumulation  of  facts,  and  how  effective  the  con- 
trasts : 

The  dead  seem  all  alive  in  the  human  Hades  of  Homer, 
yet  cannot  well  speak,  prophesy,  or  know  the  living,  ex- 
cept they  drink  blood,  wherein  Is  the  life  of  man.  And 
therefore  the  souls  of  Penelope's  paramours,  conducted 
by  Mercury,  chirped  like  bats,  and  those  which  followed 
Hercules  made  a  noise  but  like  a  flock  of  birds. 

The  departed  spirits  know  things  past  and  to  come; 
yet  are  Ignorant  of  things  present.  Agamemnon  foretells 
what  should  happen  to  Ulysses;  yet  Ignorantly  enquires 
what  has  become  of  his  own  son.  The  ghosts  are  afraid 
of  swords  In  Homer;  yet  Sibylla  tells  ^neas  In  Virgil, 
the  thin  habit  of  spirits  was  beyond  the  force  of  weapons. 
The  spirits  put  off  their  malice  with  their  bodies,  and 
Caesar  and  Pompey  accord  in  Latin  hell;  yet  Ajax,  in 
Homer,  endures  not  a  conference  with  Ulysses;  and  Dei- 
phobus  appears  all  mangled  in  Virgil's  ghosts,  yet  we 


96  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

meet  with  perfect  shadows  among  the  wounded  ghosts  of 
Homer. 

But  these  examples  do  not  show  Browne  at  his 
very  best;  they  merely  serve  to  illustrate  his  ordi- 
nary style.  To  show  him  at  his  best  through  quo- 
tation is  a  very  difficult  thing,  as  Professor  Saints- 
bury  recently  pointed  out.  His  splendours  are  in 
rare  sentences  which  somehow  or  other  light  up 
the  whole  page  in  which  they  occur.  Every  stu- 
dent should  know  the  wonderful  passage  about 
the  use  of  Egyptian  mummies  for  medicine, — 
mummy-flesh  being  a  drug  known  to  English 
medicine  up  to  the  year  1721.  I  should  like  to 
read  the  whole  passage  to  you  in  which  this  sen- 
tence occurs,  but  this  would  require  too  much 
time ;  suffice  to  quote  the  conclusion  : 

Egyptian  ingenuity  was  more  unsatisfied,  contriving 
their  bodies  in  sweet  consistencies,  to  attend  the  return 
of  their  souls.  But  all  was  vanity,  feeding  the  wind,  and 
folly.  The  Egyptian  mummies  which  Cambyses  or  time 
hath  spared,  avarice  now  consumeth.  Mummy  is  be- 
come merchandise,  Mizraim  cures  wounds,  and  Pharaoh 
is  sold  for  balsams. 

If  Sir  Thomas  Browne  had  lived  in  modern 
times  he  might  have  added  that  mummies  were 
used  on  the  steamboats  of  the  Nile  instead  of 
coal  —  even  within  our  own  day.  The  bodies 
•of  common  people  were  preserved  mostly  by  the 


SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  97 

use  of  cheap  resinous  substances,  such  as  pitch; 
therefore,  as  soon  as  it  was  found  by  the  steam- 
boat companies  that  they  would  burn  very  well 
indeed,  they  were  burned  by  tens  of  thousands  to 
make  steam !  Also  I  suppose  that  you  may  have 
heard  how  mummy  dust  w^as  sold  for  manure, 
until  English  laws  were  passed  to  prevent  the  cus- 
tom. Sir  Thomas  Browne's  object  in  these  pages 
is  only  to  point  out  the  folly  of  funeral  pomp,  or 
of  seeking  to  maintain  a  great  fame  among  men 
after  death,  because  all  things  are  impermanent 
and  pass  away;  and  his  illustrations  are  always 
strikingly  forcible.  On  the  subject  of  human  im- 
permanency  the  book  is  full  of  splendid  sentences, 
many  of  which  are  worth  learning  by  heart.  But 
let  us  turn  to  a  less  sombre  subject  —  to  a  beauti- 
ful paragraph  in  the  fourth  chapter  of  the  "  Gar- 
den of  Cyrus  " : 

Light  that  makes  things  seen,  makes  some  things  in- 
visible; were  it  not  for  darkness  and  the  shadow  of  the 
earth,  the  noblest  part  of  the  creation  had  remained  un- 
seen, and  the  stars  in  heaven  as  invisible  as  on  the  fourth 
day,  when  they  were  created  above  the  horizon  with  the 
sun,  or  there  was  not  an  eye  to  behold  them.  The  great- 
est mystery  of  religion  is  expressed  by  adumbration,  and 
in  the  noblest  part  of  Jewish  types,  we  find  the  cherubims 
shadowing  the  mercy-seat.  Life  itself  is  but  the  shadow 
of  death,  and  souls  departed  but  the  shadow  of  the  living. 
All  things  fall  under  this  name.  The  sun  itself  is  but 
the  dark  simulacrum,  and  light  but  the  shadow  of  God. 


98  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

The  little  essay  from  which  I  have  made  this 
quotation,  usually  bound  up  with  the  work  on  urn- 
burial  and  called  the  "  Garden  of  Cyrus  "  is  a 
most  curious  thing.  It  is  a  dissertation  upon  the 
Quincunx,  or,  to  use  simpler  language,  a  disserta- 
tion upon  the  mathematical,  geometrical  and  mys- 
tical values  of  the  number  Five.  The  doctor, 
beginning  his  subject  with  some  remarks  about  the 
merit  of  arranging  trees  in  a  garden  by  groups  of 
five,  is  led  on  to  consider  the  signification  of  five 
in  all  its  relations  to  the  universe.  He  discourses 
upon  that  number  in  the  heavens  and  upon  the 
earth  and  even  in  the  waters  which  are  beneath 
the  earth.  He  has  remarked  that  not  only  in  the 
human  hand  and  foot  do  we  find  the  divisions  of 
five  fingers  and  five  toes,  but  we  find  like  divisions 
in  the  limbs  of  countless  animals  and  in  the  petals 
of  flowers.  He  was  very  near  a  great  discovery 
in  these  observations;  you  know  that  botany  today 
recognizes  the  meaning  of  fives  and  sixes  in  floral 
division;  and  you  know  that  modern  physiology 
has  established  beyond  any  question  the  fact  that 
even  in  the  hoofs  of  a  horse  or  of  a  cow  we  have 
the  rudiments  of  five  toes  that  anciently  existed. 
If  the  doctor  had  lived  a  little  later  —  say  in  the 
time  of  that  country  doctor,  Erasmus  Darwin,  he 
might  have  been  able  to  forecast  many  discoveries 
of  Charles  Darwin.  Anyhow,  his  little  essay  is 
delightful  to  read;  and  if  he  did  not  anticipate 


SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  99 

some  general  laws  of  modern  science,  he  was  none 
the  less  able  to  establish  his  declaration  that  "  all 
things  began  in  order,  so  shall  they  end,  and  so 
shall  they  begin  again;  according  to  the  ordainer 
of  order  and  mystical  mathematics  of  the  city  of 
heav-en/' 

It  would  be  wrong  to  call  Sir  Thomas  Browne 
a  mystic  outside  of  the  Christian  sense.  He  was 
really  a  religious  man,  and  he  would  not  have 
ventured  to  put  out  theories  which  he  believed  the 
church  would  condemn.  But  no  writer  ever  felt 
the  poetry  of  mysticism  more  than  he,  or  ex- 
pressed its  aspirations  better  without  actually 
sharing  them.  Therefore  his  books  have  been 
classed  with  mystical  literature,  and  are  much  ad- 
mired and  studied  by  mystics.  It  is  impossible 
to  read  him  and  not  be  occasionally  astonished  by 
suggestions  and  thoughts  that  seem  much  too 
large  for  orthodox  Christianity,  but  which  would 
excellently  illustrate  the  teaching  of  older  east- 
ern religions. 

I  shall  be  glad  if  these  notes  upon  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  should  serve  to  interest  you  in  some  of 
his  best  writings.  But  I  think  that  his  value  for 
you  will  be  chiefly  in  the  suggestive  direction. 
He  is  a  great  teacher  in  certain  arts  of  style  —  in 
the  art  of  contrast,  in  the  art  of  compression,  in 
the  art  of  rhythm,  and  of  melody.  I  do  not  think 
that  you  could,  however,  learn  the  latter  from 


loo  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

him.  What  you  would  learn  would  be  the  value 
of  contrasts  of  metaphor,  and  of  a  certain  fine 
economy  of  words;  the  rest  is  altogether  too 
classical  for  you  to  apprehend  the  secret  of  it. 
Indeed,  it  Is  only  a  Greek  and  Latin  training  that 
can  give  full  apprehension  of  what  the  beauties 
of  his  style  are.  But,  like  all  true  style,  there  is 
much  there  that  means  only  character,  personal- 
ity,—  the  charm  of  the  man  himself,  the  grace  of 
his  mind;  and  all  that,  you  can  very  well  under- 
stand. I  think  you  could  scarcely  read  the  book 
and  not  feel  strange  retrospective  affection  for  the 
man  who  wrote  it. 

Now  the  great  thing  for  you  to  remember 
about  his  place  in  English  literature  is  that  he  was 
the  father  and  founder  of  English  classic  prose. 
He  was  the  source  from  which  Dr.  Johnson  ob- 
tained inspiration;  he  was  the  first  also  to  show 
those  capacities  of  majesty  and  sonority  in  Eng- 
lish prose  which  Gibbon  afterwards  displayed  on 
so  vast  a  scale;  he  was  also  the  first  to  use  effect- 
ively that  art  of  contrast  and  of  antithesis  which 
was  to  make  so  great  a  part  of  the  wonderful 
style  of  Macaulay.  And  even  today  no  student 
can  read  Sir  Thomas  Browne  without  some 
profit.  He  is  incomparably  superior  to  Bacon 
and  to  not  a  few  others  who  are  much  more 
widely  known.  I  do  not  think  that  the  study  of 
Bacon's  essays  can  be  at  all  profitable  to  the  stu- 


SIR  THOMAS  BROWNE  ioi 

,""  ^ '    »    >    , ,  - .  ^  ^   ,   ,  ^  .  .  >^ 

dent  In  the  matter  of  style ^-^Vather ' the  reVei'sc.' 
The  value  of  Bacon  is  chiefly  In  his  thinking.     But 
Sir  Thomas  Browne  offers  you  both  thoughts  and 
style  in  the  very  finest  form. 

Nevertheless  I  must  utter  a  final  word  of  dis- 
favour. There  is  one  drawback  to  all  such  style 
as  that  which  we  have  been  considering  —  not 
excepting  the  styles  of  Gibbon  or  Macaulay.  It 
is  the  necessarily  limited  range  of  their  power. 
You  can  not  appeal  to  the  largest  possible  audi- 
ence with  a  scholarly  style.  And  what  is  worse, 
every  such  style,  being  artificial  more  than  nat- 
ural, contains  within  itself  certain  elements  of 
corruption  and  dissolution.  We  have  to  read 
Sir  Thomas  Browne  with  a  glossary  today  —  that 
is,  if  we  wish  to  be  very  exact  in  our  renderings 
of  his  thoughts ;  you  will  find  an  extensive  glossary 
attached  to  his  work.  This  you  will  not  find  In 
Gibbon  or  Macaulay,  but  this  is  only  because  they 
are  still  near  to  us  In  time.  For  all  that,  the 
language  of  the  former  is  now  found  to  be  de- 
cidedly old-fashioned,  notwithstanding  its  beauty; 
and  the  style  of  the  latter  will  probably  become 
old-fashioned  during  the  present  century.  It  Is 
quite  otherwise  in  the  case  of  that  simple  northern 
style,  of  which  I  gave  you  specimens  in  a  former 
lecture.  That  never  can  become  old-fashioned, 
even  though  the  language  die  in  which  it  was  orig- 
inally written.     Containing  nothing  artificial.  It 


102  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

aist)'Cbil't'a[ins"  no 'element  of  decay.  It  can  im- 
press equally  well  the  most  learned  and  the  most 
ignorant  minds,  and  if  we  have  to  make  a  choice 
at  all  between  their  perfectly  plain  style  and  the 
gorgeous  music  and  colours  of  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  I  should  not  hesitate  for  a  moment  to 
tell  you  that  the  simple  style  is  much  the  better. 
However,  that  is  not  a  reason  for  refusing  to 
give  to  the  classic  wTiters  the  praise  and  admira- 
tion which  they  have  so  justly  earned. 


Ill 

BJORNSON 

Before  studying  some  further  wonderful  prose 
I  want  to  speak  to  you  about  what  I  believe  to  be 
a  wide-spread  and  very  harmful  delusion  in  Japan. 
I  mean  the  delusion  that  students  of  English  lit- 
erature ought  to  study  in  English  only  the  books 
originally  written  in  English ; —  not  English  trans- 
lations from  other  languages.  Of  course,  in 
these  times,  I  acknowledge  that  there  is  some  rea- 
son for  distrust  of  translations.  Translations  are  ^ 
luade  very  quickly  and  very  badly,  only  for  the  * 
purpose  of  gaining  money,  and  a  vast  amount  of 
Tiodern  translation  is  absolute  trash,  but  it  is  very 

ferent   in   the    case   of    foreign   works   which    ■ 


BJORNSON  103 

have  been  long  adopted  Into  the  English  language, 
and  which  have  become  practically  a  common  pos- 
session of  Englishmen, — -  such  as  the  translation 
of  the  "Arabian  Nights/'  the  grand  prose  transla- 
tion of  Goethe's  "  Faust,"  the  translation  of 
"  Wilhelm  Meister "  by  Carlyle,  the  translation 
of  "XJndine  "  which  every  boy  reads,  to  mention 
only  a  few  things  at  random.  So  with  the  trans- 
lations of  the  great  Italian  and  Spanish  and  Rus- 
sian writers, —  not  to  speak  of  French  writers. 
In  fact,  if  Englishmen  had  studied  only  English 
literature,  English  literature  would  never  have  be- 
come developed  as  it  is  now.  And  if  EngHsh- 
men  had  studied  foreign  literature  only  in  the 
original  tongue,  English  literature  would  still 
have  made  very  little  progress.  It  has  been 
through  thousands  of  translations,  not  through 
scholarly  study,  that  the  best  of  our  poetry,  the 
best  of  our  fiction,  the  best  of  our  prose  has  been 
modified  and  improved  by  foreign  influence.  As 
I  once  before  told  you,  the  development  of  litera- 
ture Is  only  in  a  very  limited  degree  the  work  of 
the  scholars.  The  great  scholars  are  seldom  pro- 
ducers of  enduring  literature.  The  men  who 
make  that  must  be  men  of  natural  genius,  which 
has  nothing  to  do  with  scholarship;  and  the  ma- 
jority of  them  are  not,  as  a  rule,  even  educated 
beyond  the  ordinary.  To  furnish  these  men  with 
the  stimulus  of  exotic  Ideas,  those  ideas  should  be 


104  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

placed  before  them  In  their  own  tongue.  Now  it 
may  seem  to  you  very  strange  that  foreign  in- 
fluence should  operate  chiefly  through  transla- 
tions, but  the  history  of  nearly  every  European 
literature  proves  that  such  Is  the  case.  And  I  am 
quite  sure  that  if  Japan  Is  to  produce  an  extensive 
new  literature  in  the  future,  it  will  not  be  until 
after  fresh  ideas  have  become  widely  assimilated 
by  the  nation  through  thousands  of  translations. 
For  these  reasons,  I  think  It  is  a  very  unfortunate 
notion  that  the  study  of  English  literature  should 
be  confined  to  the  study  of  books  originally  writ- 
ten in  English,  or  even  written  by  Englishmen. 

How  is  the  mind  of  the  English  boy  formed? 
If  you  think  about  that,  you  will  discover  that 
English  literature  really  represents  but  a  part  and 
a  small  part  of  world  influences  on  him.  After 
the  age  of  the  nursery  songs,  most  of  which  are 
really  of  English  origin,  comes  the  age  of  fairy 
tales,  of  which  very  few  can  be  traced  to  English 
sources.  Indeed  *I  beheve  that  '^  Jack  the  Giant 
Killer  "  and  ''  Jack  and  the  Beanstalk  "  are  quite 
exceptional  in  the  fact  that  they  are  truly  Eng- 
lish. *'  Puss  in  Boots "  is  not  English,  but 
French;  "  Cinderella  "  is  French;  ^'  The  Sleeping 
Beauty  "  is  French;  "  The  White  Cat  "  is  French; 
and  "  Bluebeard  "  is  French.  In  fact,  the  great 
mass  of  our  fairy  tales  are  translations  from 
French  authors  such  as  Perrault  and  Madame 


BJORNSON  105 

d'Aulnoy,  to  mention  only  two.  When  the  little 
boy  has  feasted  himself  to  repletion  upon  this 
imaginative  diet,  what  Is  the  next  course  of  read- 
ing? Other  fairy  tales,  of  a  deeper  character  — 
half  pure  story,  half  moral  teaching;  and  where 
do  these  stories  come  from?  Well,  they  are  not 
English  at  all;  they  are  translations  from  other 
languages,  chiefly  German  and  Swedish.  The 
most  important  of  all  works  of  this  kind  are  those 
of  Hans  Andersen.  Every  child  must  read  them 
and  learn  from  them,  and  they  have  now  become 
so  much  a  part  of  English  child  life  that  we  can 
not  help  wondering  what  children  did  before  An- 
dersen was  born.  The  best  German  work  of  this 
sort  Is  the  work  of  Grimm.  Everybody  knows 
something  about  that.  After  this  reading,  stories 
of  adventure  are  generally  taken  up,  or  slight  ro- 
mances of  some  kind.  There  Is  "  Robinson 
Crusoe,"  of  course,  which  Is  English,  and  "  Gul- 
liver's Travels  " ;  but  excepting  these  two,  I  be- 
lieve that  most  of  the  first  class  of  juvenile  ro- 
mance consists  of  translations.  For  example.  In 
my  boyhood  the  romances  of  Henry  Conscience 
were  read  by  all  boys;  and  they  are  translated 
from  the  Dutch.  And  even  when  a  lad  has  come 
to  delight  in  Sir  Walter  Scott,  he  has  still  foreign 
literary  influences  of  even  greater  power  work- 
ing upon  his  imagination  —  such  as  the  magic  of 
the    elder   Alexandre    Dumas.     The    wonderful 


io6  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

stories  of  "  Monte  Cristo  "  and  of  **  The  Three 
Musketeers  "  have  become  indispensable  reading 
for  the  young,  and  their  influence  upon  modern 
English  fiction  has  been  very  great.  Still  later 
one  has  to  read  the  extraordinary  novels  of  Vic- 
tor Hugo ;  and  there  is  no  time  at  which  the  Eng- 
lish student  is  not  directly  or  indirectly  affected 
by  French  masters  as  well  as  by  the  German  mas- 
ters. Of  course  you  will  say  that  I  am  mention- 
ing modern  authors  when  I  speak  of  Dumas  and 
Hugo.  Yes,  they  are  almost  contemporaries. 
But  when  we  look  back  to  the  times  before  these 
great  men  were  heard  of,  we  still  find  that  for- 
eign literature  influenced  Elizabethans  quite  as 
much  as  contemporary  English  literature.  In  the 
eighteenth  century  the  influence  was  French,  and 
other  foreign  influences  were  at  work.  Then 
everybody  had  to  read  the  classic  French  authors, 
but  even  these  were  not  dull;  there  were  story- 
tellers among  them  who  supplied  what  the  au- 
thors of  the  romantic  time  supplied  to  the  English 
youth  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Also  in  the  sev- 
enteenth century  there  was  some  French  influence, 
mixed  with  Italian  and  Spanish.  In  the  Eliza- 
bethan Age,  education  was  not  so  widely  diffused, 
but  we  know  that  the  young  people  of  those  times 
used  to  read  Spanish  novels  and  stories,  and  that 
no  less  than  one  hundred  and  seventy  Spanish 
books  were  then  translated. 


BJORNSON  107 

I  think  you  will  see  from  all  this  that  English 
literature  actually  depends  for  its  vitality  upon 
translations,  and  that  the  minds  of  English  youth 
are  by  no  means  formed  through  purely  English 
influences.  Observe  that  I  have  not  said  any- 
thing about  the  study  of  Greek  and  Latin,  which 
are  more  than  foreign  influences;  they  are  actually 
influences  from  another  vanished  world.  Nor 
have  I  said  anything  about  the  influence  of  re- 
ligious literature,  vast  as  it  is  —  Hebrew  litera- 
ture, literature  of  the  Bible,  on  which  are  based 
the  prayers  that  children  learn  at  their  mother's 
knee.  Really,  instead  of  being  the  principal  fac- 
tor in  English  education,  English  literature  occu- 
pies quite  a  small  place.  If  an  Englishman  only 
knew  English  literature,  he  would  know  very  little 
indeed.  The  best  of  his  literature  may  be  in  Eng- 
lish; he  has  Shakespeare,  for  example;  but  the 
greater  part  of  it  is  certainly  not  English,  and 
even  today  its  yearly  production  is  being  more  and 
more  affected  by  the  Ideas  of  France  and  Italy  and 
Russia  and  Sweden  and  Norway  —  without  men- 
tioning the  new  influences  from  many  Oriental 
countries. 

No :  you  should  think  of  any  foreign  language 
that  you  are  able  to  acquire,  not  as  the  medium 
for  expressing  only  the  thoughts  of  one  people, 
but  as  a  medium  through  which  you  can  obtain 
the  best  thought  of  the  world.     If  you  can  not 


io8  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

read  Russian,  why  not  read  the  Russian  novelists 
in  English  or  French?  Perhaps  you  can  not  read 
Italian  or  Spanish;  but  that  is  no  reason  why  you 
should  not  know  the  poems  of  Petrarch  and 
Ariosto,  or  the  dramas  of  Calderon.  If  you  do 
not  know  Portuguese,  there  is  a  good  English 
translation  of  Camoens.  I  suppose  that  in  Tokyo 
very  few  persons  know  Finnish;  but  the  wonder- 
ful epic  of  "  Kalevala  ''  can  be  read  today  in  Eng- 
lish, French  and  in  German.  It  is  not  necessary 
to  have  studied  Sanskrit  in  order  to  know  the 
gigantic  epics  of  India;  there  are  many  European 
translations  of  the  "  Mahabharata  "  and  "  Rama- 
yana  " —  indeed,  there  are  English  and  French 
translations  of  most  of  the  great  Sanskrit  writers, 
though  the  Germans  have  been  perhaps  the  great- 
est workers  in  this  field.  You  can  read  the 
Arabian  and  the  Persian  poets  also  in  English; 
and  there  are  Oriental  classics  that  everybody 
should  know  something  about  —  such  as  the 
''Shah-Nameh,"  or  "  Book  of  Kings  "  of  Firdusi; 
*'  The  Gulistan  "  of  Saadi;  and  the  "  Divan  "  of 
•Hafiz.  And  speaking  of  English  translations 
only,  both  the  written  and  the  unwritten  litera- 
tures of  almost  every  people  under  the  sun  can  be 
read  in  English  —  even  the  songs  and  the  prov- 
erbs of  the  most  savage  tribes.  There  is  one 
great  defect  in  English  work  of  this  kind, —  a 
great  deal  of  such  translation  has  been  made  in 


BJORNSON  109 

bad  verse.  For  this  reason  the  French  transla- 
tors who  keep  to  prose  are  generally  to  be  pre- 
ferred. But  you  have  certainly  learned  how 
great  some  English  translators  have  proved 
themselves,  even  in  verse, —  for  example,  Fitz- 
gerald; and  scarcely  less  interesting  and  sympa- 
thetic than  Fitzgerald  is  Palmer's  volume  of 
translation  from  the  ancient  Arabian  poets. 
However,  what  I  am  anxious  to  impress  uport> 
you  is  this, —  that  the  English  language  can  give 
you  not  only  some  knowledge  of  the  productions 
of  one  race,  but  the  intellectual  wealth  of  the 
entire  world.  In  England  there  are  many  thou-v 
sarids  of  persons  who  can  not  read  German,  but 
there  are  no  educated  persons  who  have  not  read 
the  German  poets  in  English,  and  who  can  not 
quote  to  you  some  verses  of  Heine. 

Now  if  you  are  satisfied  that  the  study  of  Eng- 
lish means  for  you  infinitely  more  than  the  study 
of  English  authors,  you  will  know  why  I  am  not 
attempting  to  confine  these  lectures  to  original 
English  prose.  I  shall  take  only  the  best  exam- 
ples that  I  can  find  in  any  kind  of  European  prose 
for  illustration;  because  everything  depends  upon 
the  idea  and  the  form,  and  neither  the  idea  nor 
the  form  of  prose  (it  is  not  the  same  in  the  case 
of  poetry)  can  be  restricted  by  the  boundaries  of 
language.  In  the  last  two  lectures  of  this  series 
I  gave  you  two  extremely  different  examples  of 


no  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

style  —  one  representing  the  old  Norse  or  saga 
style;  the  other  the  elaborate,  fantastic,  almost 
pedantic,  but  matchlessly  beautiful  prose  of  Sir 
Thomas  Browne.  Both  of  these  refer  to  the 
past;  and  the  contrast  was  about  as  strong  as  It 
could  be  made.  Now  let  us  turn  to  modern 
times,  to  the  nineteenth  century,  and  again  take 
two  striking  examples  of  the  most  simple  and  the 
most  ornamental  varieties  of  prose.  The  simple 
style  will  again  be  Norse;  for  the  genius  of  the 
race,  which  showed  Itself  so  markedly  in  those 
quotations  from  the  sagas  which  I  gave  you,  again 
shows  Itself  today  In  the  nineteenth  century  prose 
of  the  very  same  people.  Let  us  now  talk  about 
that. 

You  must  not  suppose  that  Norse  literature  re- 
mained unaffected  by  change  through  all  the  cen- 
turies—  I  am  not  speaking  of  language  (that  Is 
not  at  all  the  same),  but  of  method.  On  the 
contrary,  the  Norwegians  and  Swedes  and  Danes 
went  through  very  much  the  same  kind  of  literary 
experiences  as  the  English  and  the  French,  the 
Italians  and  the  Germans.  They  had  also  their 
romantic  and  classic  periods;  even  they  became 
for  a  while  artificial,  especially  the  Danes;  and 
the  Danish  culture  remained  very  conservative  in 
its  classicism  until  well  into  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. And  at  that  time  it  was  Danish  culture 
that  especially  affected  education  In  Norway  and 


BJORNSON  III 

Sweden.  But  In  1832  there  was  born  a  man  des- 
tined to  revive  the  ancient  saga  literature  In  mod-  • 
ern  times,  and  so  make  a  new  literature  unlike 
anything  that  had  been  before  it.  That  man  was 
Bjornstjerne  Bjornson.  He  went  through  the 
usual  course  of  university  education,  and  did  not 
prove  himself  a  good  scholar.  He  was  always 
dreaming  about  other  things  than  Greek  or  Latin 
or  mathematics,  and  instead  of  trying  to  compete 
for  any  university  honours,  he  gave  all  his  spare 
time  to  the  reading  of  books  having  nothing  to 
do  with  the  university  course.  The  ancient 
Norse  literature  especially  interested  him;  he  read 
everything  relating  to  It  that  he  could  lay  hands 
upon.  He  had  hard  work  to  pass  his  examina- 
tions, and  his  fellow-students  never  imagined  that 
he  would  be  able  to  do  anything  great  in  the 
world.  But  presently,  after  leaving  the  univers- 
ity, this  dreaming  young  man  suddenly  developed 
an  immense  amount  of  unsuspected  intellectual 
energy.  He  became  a  journalist,  which,  of  all 
professions,  is  the  worst  for  a  man  of  letters  to 
undertake;  and  in  spite  of  It  he  produced  a  won- 
derful novel,  within  quite  a  short  time,  which  at- 
tracted the  attention  of  all  Europe  and  has  been 
translated  Into  most  European  languages.  This 
novel  was  "  Synnove  Solbakken,"  a  story  of  Nor- 
wegian peasant  life.  Bjornson  himself  was  a 
peasant's  son,   and  he  had  lived  and  seen  that 


112  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

which  he  described  In  this  novel.  But  the  wonderj 
of  the  book  was  not  in  the  story,  not  in  the  plot; 
It  was  in  the  astonishing  method  of  the  telling. 
The  book  reads  as  if  it  had  been  written  by  ai 
saga  man  of  the  ninth  or  tenth  century;  the  life 
described  is  indeed  modern,  but  the  art  of  telling 
it  is  an  art  a  thousand  years  old,  which  scholars 
imagined  could  never  be  revived  again.  Bjorn- 
son  revived  it;  and  by  so  doing  he  has  affected 
almost  every  literature  in  Europe.  Perhaps  he 
has  especially  affected  some  of  the  great  French 
realists;  at  all  events,  he  gave  everybody  inter- 
ested in  literature  something  new  to  think  about. 
But  this  first  novel  was  only  the  beginning  of  a 
surprising  series  of  productions, — poetical,  ro- 
mantic, historical  and  political.  Bjornson  went 
into  politics,  became  a  statesman,  did  honour  to 
his  country,  did  a  great  many  wonderful  things. 
But  his  chief  merit  is  that  he  is  the  father  and 
founder  of  a  new  literature,  which  we  may  call  | 
modern  Norse.  The  study  of  the  modern  Norse  | 
writers  ought  to  be  of  great  service  to  Japanese 
students,  for  this  strong  and  simple  style  accords 
remarkably  well  with  the  best  traditions  of  Japan- 
ese prose.  Moreover,  the  works  of  these  writers 
have  been  put  into  English  by  scholarly  men  — 
masters  of  clear  and  pure  English,  who  have  been 
able  to  preserve  the  values  of  the  original.  This 
is  easy  to  do  in  the  case  of  the  Northern  dialects 


BJORNSON  ii:j 

'  proper,  which  are  very  close  to  English  —  much' 
;  closer  than  French,  much  closer  even  than  Ger- 
man.    The  simpler  the  style,  the  less  it  loses  by 
translation. 

'     Moreover,  you  will  find  in  the  work  of  this 
man  the  most  perfect  pictures  possible  to  make 
of  the  society  and  the  character  of  a  people.     The 
people  ought  to  interest  you  —  ought  to  interest 
any  student  of  English  literature;  for  it  was  out 
of  this  far  north  that  came  the  best  element  in  the 
English  race,  the  strongest  and  a  good  deal  of  the 
best  feeling  that  expresses  itself  in  English  litera- 
ture.    You  will  find  in  these  stories,  or  studies 
from  real  life,  that  the  race  has  remained  very 
jmuch  the  same  from  ancient  times.     It  is  true 
that  today  in  all  the  schools  of  Norway  the  stu- 
;  dents  learn  English   and   French;   that  modern 
science  and  modern  philosophy  are  most  diligently 
acquired;  that  Norway  has  produced  poets,  dram- 
;  atists,  men  of  science,  and  men  of  art,  well  worthy 
of  being  compared  with  those  of  almost  any  other 
country.     It  is  true  that  writers  like  Bjornson  and 
Ibsen  (the  only  other  Norwegian  man  of  letters 
I  of  today  who  can  be  compared  with  Bjornson) 
i  have  been  actually  able  to  influence  English  litera- 
;  ture  and  European  drama  in  general.     But  it  is 
not  in  the  cities  nor  in  the  most  highly  cultivated 
classes   that   the   national    distinctiveness    in    the 
character  of  a  people  can  be  judged.     You  must 


114  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

go  into  the  country  to  study  that;  you  must  know 
the  peasantry,  who  really  form  the  body  and 
strength  of  any  nation.  Bjornson  well  knew  this; 
and  his  university  training  did  not  blind  him  to  the 
literary  importance  of  such  studies.  The  best  of 
his  fiction,  and  the  bulk  of  it,  treats  of  peasant 
life;  and  this  life  he  portrayed  in  a  way  that  has 
no  parallel  in  European  literature,  with  the  pos- 
sible exception  of  the  Russian  work  done  by 
Turgueniev  and  others.  He  has  also  given  us  | 
studies  of  Norwegian  character  among  the  middle 
class,  among  the  clergymen,  and  among  the  highly 
cultivated  university  people,  who  discuss  the  phil- 
osophy of  Spencer  and  the  ethics  of  Kant.  But 
these  studies  are  interesting  only  to  the  degree 
that  they  show  the  real  Norse  character,  such  as 
the  peasant  best  exemplifies,  in  spite  of  modern 
education.  It  is  a  very  stern,  strong  and  terrible 
character;  but  it  is  also  both  lovable  and  admir- 
able. Brutal  at  moments,  it  is  the  most  formid- 
able temperament  that  we  can  imagine;  but  in 
steadfastness  and  affection  and  depth  of  emo- 
tional power,  it  is  very  grand.  At  first  you  will 
think  that  these  terrible  fathers  who  beat  their 
children,  and  these  terrible  young  men  who  fight 
with  demons  on  occasion,  or  who  climb  precipices 
to  court  the  maiden  of  their  choice,  are  still  sav- 
age. But  after  the  shock  of  the  strange  has 
passed,  you  will  see  that  they  are  after  all  very 


BJORNSON  115 

human  and  very  affectionate;  and  that  if  they  are 
rougher  than  we  in  their  ways,  it  is  because  they 
are  stronger  and  better  able  to  endure  and  to 
benefit  by  pain.  Well,  as  I  said,  every  kind  of 
northern  society  is  depicted  in  Bjornson's  tales, 
but  the  greatest  of  all  is  the  story  of  "  Synnove 
Solbakken."  It  is  a  very  simple  story  of  peasant 
life.  It  describes  the  lives  of  a  boy  and  girl  in 
the  country  up  to  the  time  of  their  marriage  to 
each  other,  and  it  treats  especially  of  the  inner 
life  of  these  two  —  their  thoughts,  their  troubles, 
their  affections.  There  is  nothing  unusual  about 
it  except  the  truth  of  the  delineation.  This  de- 
lineation is  done  very  much  as  the  old  Norse 
writers  of  whom  I  spoke  to  you  before  would 
have  done  it. 

I  shall  quote  only  a  little  bit, —  because  the 
ancient  extracts  which  I  gave  you  from  the  saga 
must  have  served  to  show  you  what  I  mean. 
The  scene  described  is  that  where  the  boy  is 
taken  to  church  for  the  first  time,  and  there  sees 
a  little  girl  whom  he  is  to  marry  many  years 
later. 

There  was  a  little  girl  kneeling  on  the  bench,  and  look- 
ing over  the  railing.  She  was  still  fairer  than  the  man 
—  so  fair  that  he  had  never  seen  her  equal.  She  had  a 
red  streamer  to  her  cap,  and  yellow  hair  beneath  this,  and 
she  smiled  at  him  —  so  that  for  a  long  time  he  could  not 
see  anything  but  her  white  teeth.     She  held  a  hymn-book 


ii6  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

in  one  hand,  and  a  folded  handkerchief  in  the  other,  and 
was  now  amusing  herself  by  striking  the  handkerchief  on 
the  hymn-book.  The  more  he  stared  the  more  she  smiled ; 
and  now  he  chose  also  to  kneel  on  the  bench  just  as  she 
was  doing.  Then  she  nodded.  He  looked  gravely  at  her 
a  moment;  then  he  nodded.  She  smiled  and  nodded  once 
more;  he  nodded  again,  and  once  more,  and  still  once 
more.  She  smiled,  but  did  not  nod  any  more  for  a  little  ^ 
while,  until  he  had  quite  forgotten ;  then  she  nodded. 

No  more  natural  description  was  ever  given  of 
the  manner  in  which  two  little  children,  still  un- 
trained, act  upon  seeing  each  other  for  the  first 
time,  without  being  able  to  get  close  enough  to 
talk.  They  tried  to  talk  by  nods  and  smiles, 
when  they  like  each  other's  looks.  There  is  a 
very  fine  study  of  conversation  when  these  two  do 
come  together  —  the  random  conversation  of 
children,  full  of  affection,  also  full  of  innocent 
vanity  and  innocent  desire  to  please.  But  be- 
fore they  come  together  the  little  boy  has  a  fight 
with  another  little  boy,  which  is  also  admirably 
told.  You  feel  that  the  writer  of  the  book  must 
have  had  this  fight  himself.  Later  on  the  hero 
is  to  have  a  very  terrible  fight,  with  a  jealous  and 
powerful  man  —  a  fight  that  almost  takes  the 
reader's  breath  away;  and  this  is  told  just  as  a 
saga  man  would  have  told  it  a  thousand  years 
ago.  I  am  not  going  to  attempt  to  quote  it  now, 
for  it  is  too  long;  and  one  part  can  not  be  ex- 


BJORNSON  117 

tracted  from  the  rest  without  injuring  the  effect 
of  the  whole.  But  some  day  when  you  read  it, 
please  to  notice  that  quality  in  it  by  which  north- 
ern writers  surpass  all  others  —  I  mean  exactness 
in  relating  the  succession  of  incidents.  This  is  a 
quahty  to  which  Professor  Ker  has  but  lately 
called  attention.  I  told  you,  when  we  were  talk- 
ing about  the  sagas,  that  I  believed  the  style  of 
these  men  depended  upon  the  perfection  of  their 
senses  —  quickness  of  eye,  accuracy  of  percep- 
tion; and  what  Professor  Ker  has  said  in  his  lec- 
tures upon  this  very  style  would  seem  to  confirm 
this.  For  example,  he  remarks  that  a  writer  of 
today  might  write  in  English  such  a  statement  as 
**  he  felt  the  king  come  behind  him  and  put  both 
hands  over  his  eyes."  Professor  Ker  observes 
that  a  Norseman  never  could  have  written  such  a 
statement,  because  it  is  inaccurate  in  regard  to 
the  succession  of  incidents.  The  Norse  writer 
would  have  said,  *'  he  felt  some  one  touching  him 
from  behind;  and  before  he  could  turn  his  head 
.to  look,  a  hand  was  placed  over  his  eyes;  and  he 
knew,  by  the  ring  upon  the  hand,  that  it  was  the 
king."  That  is  the  proper  way  to  relate  the  fact 
accurately.  He  could  not  know,  when  he  first 
felt  himself  touched  behind,  that  the  king  was 
touching  him,  nor  could  he  know  that  the  king's 
hands  were  placed  before  his  eyes,  until  he  saw 
something  about  or  upon  the  hands,  by  which  he 


ii8  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

could  identify  them.  Seeing  the  king's  ring  upon 
a  finger  of  the  hand,  he  knew  that  he  was  being 
held  by  the  king.  In  reality  all  this  would  hap- 
pen In  a  second,  and  modern  writers  are  not  in 
the  habit  of  studying  the  succession  of  the  events 
within  so  short  a  time  as  a  second.  But  the 
Norseman  was  obliged  to  do  so;  if  he  could  not 
measure  with  his  eye  what  took  place  within  even 
the  fraction  of  a  second,  he  might  lose  his  life  at 
any  moment.  Now  you  will  find  in  the  descrip- 
tion of  this  fight  in  "  Synnove  Solbakken  "  ex- 
actly the  same  faultless  accuracy  as  to  succession 
of  incidents.  One  man  is  drunk,  and  undertakes 
to  fight  because  he  is  drunk;  the  other  man,  who  is 
sober,  does  not  wish  to  fight,  nevertheless  the 
fight  is  forced  upon  him  by  a  succession  of  little 
circumstances,  all  of  which  could  not  have  oc- 
cupied more  than  five  or  ten  minutes.  An  Eng- 
lish story-writer  of  today  would  probably  have 
compressed  that  ten  minutes  Into  two  lines  of 
prose.  But  Bjornson  gives  three  pages  to  those 
ten  minutes,  and  by  so  doing  he  thrills  you  with 
all  the  excitement  and  passion  of  the  moment  as 
no  English  writer  can  do.  Still,  you  must  not 
think  that  he  Is  prolix.  Really  he  never  describes 
anything  which  is  not  absolutely  necessary.  But 
he  knows  what  is  necessary  much  better  than 
other  writers.  He  does  not  avoid  little  details 
because  they  happen  to  be  very  difficult  to  recount. 


BJORNSON  119 

If  any  of  you  have  been  forced  into  a  quarrel  of  a 
dangerous  kind,  I  am  sure  you  will  remember 
that  all  the  little  details  of  those  moments  before 
the  quarrel,  although  not  remarked  perhaps  by 
others  present,  were  extremely  clear  to  your  own 
perception.  Danger  sharpens  the  senses,  quite 
independently  of  the  fact  that  the  person  is  brave 
or  not  brave.  At  any  such  time  you  can  hear  and 
you  can  see  better  than  at  ordinary  times.  Bjorn- 
son  knew  this.  That  is  what  makes  his  account 
of  the  fight  between  two  peasants  one  of  the 
greatest  things  in  modern  fiction. 

Now  I  want  to  interest  you  in  Bjornson  as  the 
founder  of  a  school, —  to  make  you  remember  his 
name,  to  tempt  you  to  read  his  wonderful  story. 
But  I  shall  not  talk  more  about  him  now. 
Enough  to  say  that  he  has  done  in  Norway  what 
I  hope  some  future  Japanese  writer  will  do  in 
Japan.  You  know  what  I  mean  by  Norse  style 
both  in  ancient  ages  and  in  our  own  day  —  that 
is,  you  must  be  able  after  these  lectures  to  have 
a  general  idea  about  it.  And  now  for  a  contrast. 
Nothing  is  more  strongly  contrasted  with  this 
sharply  cut  hard  short  style  of  the  Norse  than  the 
prose  of  the  modern  romantic  movement.  The 
romantic  movement  in  prose  did  not  reach  its 
greatest  height  in  England.  The  English  lan- 
guage is  not  perfect  enough  in  its  prose  form  for 
the   supreme   possibilities   of  prose.     It   was   in 


I20  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

France  that  romantic  prose  became  most  highly- 
perfected;  there  were  so  many  masters  of  style 
that  it  is  hard  to  make  choice  among  them.  But 
only  one  conceived  the  idea  of  what  we  call  poet- 
ical prose  —  that  was  Baudelaire;  he  was,  you  , 
know,  a  great  and  strange  poet  who  wrote  a  vol-  I 
ume  of  splendid  but  very  terrible  verse  called 
''  Les  Fleurs  de  Mal,'^  or  "  Flowers  of  Evil  "— 
perhaps  "  venomous  or  poisonous  flowers  "  would 
better  express  the  real  meaning  of  the  title.  He 
also  translated  the  stories  of  Poe  Into  French; 
and  he  was  in  all  things  an  exquisite  artist. 


IV 

BAUDELAIRE 

Baudelaire  believed  that  prose  could  be  made 
quite  as  poetical  as  verse  or  even  more  so,  for  a 
prose  that  could  preserve  the  rhythm  of  poetry 
without  Its  monotony,  and  the  melody  of  poetry 
without  rhythm,  might  become  In  the  hands  of 
the  master  even  more  effective  than  verse.  I  do 
not  know  whether  this  Is  really  true.  I  am  In- 
clined to  think  that  It  Is;  but  I  do  not  feel  suf- 
ficiently learned  in  certain  matters  related  to  the 
question  to  venture  a  definite  opinion.  Enough 
to  say  that  Baudelaire  thought  It  possible,  and  he 


BAUDELAIRE  121 

tried  to  make  a  new  kind  of  prose ;  and  the  book 
containing  these  attempts  entitled  "  Little  Poems 
in  Prose  "  is  a  wonderful  treasure.  But  Baudel- 
aire did  not  say  anything  very  extravagant  in 
its  preface.  He  only  expressed  the  conviction 
that  a  poetical  prose  might  be  used  with  good 
effects  for  certain  particular  subjects, —  dreams, 
reveries,  the  thoughts  that  men  think  in  solitude, 
when  the  life  of  the  world  is  not  about  them  to 
disturb  their  meditations;  his  prose  essays  are  all 
reveries,  dreams,  fantasies.  I  want  to  give  you 
a  specimen  of  one  of  these;  and  I  am  going  to 
choose  that  one  which  Professor  Saintsbury  se- 
lected as  the  best.  But  let  me  tell  you  in  ad- 
vance that  the  English  language  cannot  reproduce 
the  real  values  of  Baudelaire's  prose.  I  am  not 
going  to  attempt  an  artistic  translation  for  you, 
but  only  such  a  translation  as  may  help  to  show 
you  in  a  vague  way  what  poetical  prose  means. 
The  piece  I  am  going  to  turn  into  English  is 
called  "  Les  Bienfaits  de  la  Lune," —  that  is  to 
say,  freely  rendered,  the  Gifts  of  the  Moon, — 
the  word  "  Bienfaits  "  (literally,  benefit)  being 
here  used  in  the  meaning  of  the  present  or  gift 
given  to  a  child  by  a  fairy  god-mother. 

The  Moon,  who  is  caprice  itself,  looked  through  the 
window  while  thou  wert  sleeping  in  thy  cradle,  and  ex- 
claimed: "  That  child  pleases  me!  "  And  she  softly  de- 
scended her  stairway  of  clouds,  and  passed  without  sound 


122  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

through  the  panes  of  glass;  then  she  stretched  herself 
above  thee,  with  a  mother's  supple  tenderness,  and  she  put 
her  own  colours  upon  thy  face.  Wherefore  thine  eyes 
have  always  remained  green  and  thy  cheeks  extraordinarily 
pale.  It  was  while  contemplating  this  visitor  that  thine 
eyes  first  became  so  fantastically  large ;  and  she  compressed 
thy  throat  so  tenderly  that  since  that  time  thou  hast  al- 
ways felt  a  constant  desire  to  weep. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  expansion  of  her  joy,  the  Moon 
filled  the  whole  room,  like  a  phosphoric  atmosphere,  like 
a  luminous  poison;  and  ail  that  living  light  thought  and 
spoke:  "Thou  shalt  eternally .  endure  the  influence  of 
my  kiss;  thou  shalt  be  beautiful  after  my  fashion;  thou 
shalt  love  all  I  love,  and  all  that  love  me  —  water,  the 
clouds,  the  silence,  and  the  night;  the  waters  formless  and 
multiform ;  the  place  where  thou  shalt  never  be ;  the  lover 
thou  shalt  never  know;  monstrous  flowers;  the  perfumes 
that  give  delirium;  the  cats  that  stretch  themselves  upon 
pianos,  and  moan  like  women,  with  a  hoarse  sweet  voice. 

And  thou  shalt  be  loved  by  my  lovers,  courted  by  my 
courtiers.  Thou  shalt  be  the  queen  of  green-eyed  men, 
whose  throats  I  have  also  pressed  in  my  nocturnal  caress, 
—  those  who  love  the  sea,  the  immense,  tumultuous  green 
sea-water,  formless  and  multiform,  the  place  in  which  they 
are  not,  the  woman  they  know  not,  the  sinister  flowers 
that  resemble  the  censers  of  some  unknown  religion,  the 
perfumes  that  confuse  the  will,  the  wild  and  voluptuous 
animals  that  are  the  emblems  of  their  madness. 

Of  course  in  the  French  this  is  incomparably 
more  musical  and  more  strange.  You  will  see 
that  it  has  the  qualities  of  poetry,  although  not 
poetry;  it  has  the  same  resonance,  the  same  group- 
ings of  vowel  sounds,  the  same  alliteration,  the 


BAUDELAIRE  123 

same  cadences;  It  is  very  strange,  and  it  is  also 
really  beautiful.  Probably  Baudelaire's  poetical 
prose  is  the  most  perfect  attempt  of  the  kind 
ever  made;  and  there  is  a  good  deal  of  it.  But 
being  a  very  great  artist,  he  saw,  as  I  have  told 
you  before,  that  this  kind  of  prose  is  suitable  only 
for  reveries,  dreams,  philosophical  fancies.  And 
thereby  comes  the  question  as  to  whether  a  book 
of  that  kind  should  be  written  only  in  one  style. 

Now  this  may  seem  to  you  a  queer  question,  but 
I  think  that  it  is  a  very  important  one.  The 
French  have  solved  it;  the  English  have  not. 
Everything  depends  upon  the  character  of  the 
book.  If  the  book  be  composed  of  different  kinds 
of  material,  it  seems  to  me  quite  proper  that  it 
should  be  written  in  different  styles  to  suit  the 
differences  of  subjects.  You  cannot  do  this,  how- 
ever, except  in  a  book  which  is  a  miscellany,  a 
mixtui'e  of  reflection  and  fact.  Combinations  of 
the  latter  kind  are  chiefly  possible  in  works  of 
travel.  In  a  book  of  travel  you  cannot  keep  up 
the  tone  of  poetical  prose  while  describing  simple 
facts ;  but  when  you  come  to  reflect  upon  the  facts, 
you  can  then  vary  the  style.  French  books  of 
travel  are  much  superior  to  English  in  point  of 
literary  execution,  because  the  writers  of  therje  do 
this.  They  do  it  so  naturally  that  you  are  at  ■ 
to  overlook  the  fact  that  there  are  two  styles  11 
the  same  book.     I  know  of  only  one  really  great 


124  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

English  book  of  travel  which  has  the  charm  of 
poetical  prose, —  that  is  the  "  Eothen  "  of  King- 
lake.  But  in  this  case  the  entire  book  is  written 
in  one  dream  tone.  The  author  has  not  at- 
tempted to  deal  with  details  to  any  extent.  Beau- 
tiful as  the  book  is,  it  does  not  show  the  versa- 
tility which  French  writers  of  equal  ability  often 
display.  While  on  this  subject,  it  occurs  to  me 
to  show  you  an  example  of  the  difference  in  Eng- 
lish and  French  methods,  as  shown  by  two  con- 
temporary writers  in  describing  Tokyo.  The 
English  writer  is  Kipling.  He  is  certainly  the 
most  talented  English  writer  now  living  in  de- 
scriptive and  narrative  work.  The  greatest  liv- 
ing prose  writer  among  the  French  is  Pierre  Loti 
(Julien  Viaud),  a  French  naval  officer,  and  you 
know  a  member  of  the  Academy.  I  hope  that 
you  have  not  been  prejudiced  against  him  by  the 
stupid  criticisms  of  very  shallow  men;  and  that 
you  do  not  make  the  mistake  of  blaming  the 
writer  for  certain  observations  regarding  Japan, 
which  were  made  during  a  stay  of  only  some 
weeks  in  this  country.  Although  he  was  here 
only  for  some  weeks,  and  could  only  describe  ex- 
actly what  he  saw,  knowing  nothing  about  Japan 
except  through  his  eyes,  yet  his  sketches  of  Japan 
are  incomparably  finer  and  truer  than  anything 
which  has  been  done  by  any  other  living  writer. 
His   comments,   his   inferences  may  be    entirely 


BAUDELAIRE  125 

wrong  (they  often  are)  ;  but  that  has  nothing 
really  to  do  with  the  merit  of  his  descriptions. 
When  he  describes  exactly  what  he  sees,  then  he  is 
like  a  wonderful  magician.  There  is  nobody  else 
living  who  could  do  the  same  thing.  I  suppose 
you  know  that  his  reputation  does  not  depend 
upon  his  Japanese  work,  however,  but  upon  some 
twenty  volumes  of  travel  containing  the  finest 
prose  that  has  ever  been  written.  However,  let 
us  first  take  a  few  lines  from  the  English  trav- 
eller's letter.  It  is  very  simply  phrased,  and  yet 
very  effective. 

Some  folks  say  that  Tokyo  covers  an  area  equal  to  Lon- 
don. Some  folks  say  that  it  is  not  more  than  ten  miles 
long  and  eight  miles  broad.  There  are  a  good  many  ways 
of  solving  the  question.  I  found  a  tea-garden  situated  on 
a  green  plateau  far  up  a  flight  of  steps,  with  pretty  girls 
smiling  on  every  step.  From  this  elevation  I  looked  forth 
over  the  city,  and  it  stretched  away  from  the  sea,  as  far 
as  the  eye  could  reach  —  one  grey  expanse  of  packed  house- 
roof,  the  perspective  marked  by  numberless  factory  chim- 
neys. Then  I  went  several  miles  away  and  found  a  park, 
another  eminence,  and  some  more  tea-girls  prettier  than 
the  last;  and,  looking  again,  the  city  stretched  out  in  a 
new  direction  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach.  Taking  the 
scope  of  an  eye  on  a  clear  day  at  eighteen  miles,  I  make 
Tokyo  thirty-six  miles  long  by  thirty-six  miles  broad  ex- 
actly; and  there  may  be  some  more  which  I  missed.  The 
place  roared  with  life  through  all  its  quarters. 

Here  is  the  work  of  a  practical  man  with  a 


126  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

practical  eye  —  interested  in  facts  above  all 
things,  though  not  indifferent  at  any  time  to  what 
is  beautiful.  Now,  anybody  who  reads  that  para- 
graph will  have  an  idea  of  the  size  of  Tokyo  such 
as  pages  of  description  could  not  give.  There  is 
only  one  half  line  of  description  to  note,  but  it 
is  very  strong;  and  the  use  of  house-roof  in  the 
singular  gives  a  particular  force  to  it.  That  is 
quite  enough  to  satisfy  the  average  mind.  But 
the  Frenchman  is  an  infinitely  finer  artist.  He 
also  gives  you  a  description  of  Tokyo  seen  as  a 
wilderness  of  roofs;  but  he  first  chooses  a  beau- 
tiful place  from  which  to  look  and  a  beautiful 
time  of  the  day  in  which  to  see  it.  Let  me  trans- 
late a  few  sentences  for  you : 

Uyeno, —  a  very  large  park,  wide  avenues,  well  grav- 
elled,—  bordered  with  magnificent  old  trees,  and  tufts  of 
bamboos. 

I  halt  upon  an  elevation  at  a  point  overlooking  the 
Lotos-lake,  which  reflects  the  evening,  like  a  sHghtly  tar- 
nished mirror,  all  the  gold  of  sunset.  Yedo  is  beyond 
those  still  waters;  Yedo  is  over  there,  half -lost  in  the 
reddish  mist  of  the  Autumn  evening;  a  myriad  of  infinite 
little  greyish  roofs  all  alike, —  the  furthest,  almost  indis- 
tinguishable in  the  vague  horizon,  giving  nevertheless  an 
impression  that  that  is  not  all, —  that  there  are  more  of 
them,  much  more,  in  distances  beyond  the  view.  You 
can  distinguish,  amidst  the  uniformity  of  the  low  small 
houses,  certain  larger  buildings  with  the  angles  of  their 
roofs  turned  up.  These  are  the  temples.  If  it  were  not 
for  them,  you  might  imagine  that  you  were  looking  at 


BAUDELAIRE  127 

almost  any  great  city  quite  as  well  as  you  could  imagine 
that  you  were  looking  at  Yedo.  Indeed,  it  requires  the 
effects  of  distance  and  of  a  particular  light  to  make  Yedo 
appear  charming;  at  this  moment,  for  example,  I  must 
confess  that  it  is  exquisite  to  see. 

It  is  dimly  outlined  in  the  faintest  colours;  it  has  the 
look  of  not  really  existing, —  of  being  only  a  mirage. 
Then  it  seems  as  if  long  bands  of  pink  cotton  were  slowly 
unrolling  over  the  world, —  drawing  this  chimerical  city 
in  their  soft  undulations.  Now  one  can  no  longer  distin- 
guish the  interval  between  the  lake  and  the  further  high 
land  upon  which  all  those  myriads  of  far-away  shapes  are 
built.  One  even  doubts  whether  that  really  is  a  lake,  or 
only  a  very  smooth  level,  reflecting  the  diffused  light  of 
the  sky,  or  simply  a  stretch  of  vapour;  nevertheless,  some 
few  long  rosy  gleams,  still  showing  upon  the  surface,  al- 
most suffice  to  assure  you  that  it  is  really  water,  and  that 
Lotus-beds  here  and  there  make  black  patches  against  the 
reflecting  surface. 

Although  this  rapid  translation  does  not  give 
you  the  colour  and  charm  of  the  original  French, 
you  must  be  able  to  see  even  through  it  how  very 
accurate  and  fine  the  description  is  —  an  effect 
of  evening  sunhght  and  rosy  mist.  I  think  that 
most  of  you  have  enjoyed  the  same  view,  and  have 
noticed  how  black  the  lotos  leaves  really  do  seem, 
when  the  surface  of  the  water  is  turned  to  gold 
by  sunset.  And  then  the  description  of  the  com- 
ing of  the  mists  like  long  cloud  bands  of  pink  cot- 
ton is  surely  as  beautiful  as  it  Is  true.  That  is  the 
way  that  a  Japanese  painter  would  paint  a  picture 


128  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

of  Tokyo  as  seen  from  the  same  place  at  the  same 
time.  The  Englishman  would  not  have  noticed 
all  those  delicate  and  dreamy  colours,  or  If  he 
did,  would  not  trouble  himself  to  try  to  paint 
them.      Really  It  Is  a  most  difficult  thing  to  do. 

Now  after  this  little  digression  let  me  come 
back  to  the  subject  of  variety  in  style.  Loti 
knows  the  art  of  It;  so  does  many  another  French 
writer;  but  very  few  Englishmen  do.  What  I 
am  going  to  say  is  this,  that  an  author  ought  to 
be  able  to  choose  a  different  style  for  different 
kinds  of  work, —  that  is,  a  great  author.  But  it 
is  so  much  trouble  to  master  even  one  style  per- 
fectly well,  that  very  few  authors  attempt  this. 
However,  I  think  it  can  be  laid  down  as  a  true 
axiom  that  the  style  ought  to  vary  with  the  sub- 
ject in  certain  cases;  and  I  think  that  the  great 
writers  of  the  future  will  so  vary  it.  The  poet- 
ical prose,  of  which  I  gave  you  an  example  from 
Loti,  is  admirably  suited  for  particular  kinds  of 
composition  —  short  and  dreamy  things.  It  is 
very  exhausting  to  write  much  in  such  a  style;  it 
is  quite  as  much  labour  as  to  write  the  same  thing 
in  verse.  But  a  whole  book  upon  one  subject 
could  not  be  written  in  this  way.  The  simple 
naked  style,  on  the  other  hand,  is  particularly 
adapted  to  story  telling,  to  narrative,  even  to  cer- 
tain forms  of  history.  The  rhetorical  style,  orna- 
mental without  being  exactly  poetical,  has  also  a 


BAUDELAIRE  129 

special  value ;  it  is  in  such  a  style  that  logical  argu- 
ment and  philosophical  work  in  the  form  of  es- 
says can  perhaps  be  most  effectively  presented.  I 
think  that  some  day  this  will  be  generally  done. 
But  once  it  becomes  a  fashion  to  do  it,  there  will 
be  danger  ahead, —  the  danger  of  the  custom 
hardening  Into  conventionalism.  Conventional- 
Ism  kills  style.  The  best  way,  I  think,  to  meet 
the  difficulty  suggested  will  be  to  persuade  one- 
self that  sentiment,  artistic  feeling,  absolute  sin- 
cerity of  the  emotion  and  of  the  thought  will  guide 
the  writer  better  than  any  rules  as  to  what  style 
ought  to  be  used.  If  you  try  to  imitate  a  model, 
you  win  probably  go  wrong.  All  literary  imita- 
tion means  weakness.  But  if  you  simply  follow 
your  own  feeling  and  tastes,  trying  to  be  true  to 
them,  and  to  develop  them  as  much  as  you  can  — 
then  I  think  that  your  style  will  form  itself  and 
win  naturally,  without  direction,  take  at  last  the 
particular  form  and  tone  best  adapted  to  the  sub- 
ject. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  VALUE  OF  THE   SUPERNATURAL  IN   FICTION 

The  subject  of  this  lecture  Is  much  more  seri- 
ous than  may  appear  to  you  from  this  title. 
Young  men  of  your  age  are  not  likely  to  believe 
In  ghosts,  nor  Inclined  to  consider  the  subject  as 
worthy  of  attention.  The  first  things  necessary 
to  understand  are  the  philosophical  and  literary 
relations  of  the  topic.  Let  me  tell  you  that  It 
would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  stories 
of  the  supernatural  have  had  their  day  In  fine  lit-  j 
erature.  On  the  contrary,  wherever  fine  litera- 
ture Is  being  produced,  either  in  poetry  or  In 
prose,  you  will  find  the  supernatural  element  very 
much  alive.  Scientific  knowledge  has  not  at  all 
diminished  the  pleasure  of  mankind  in  this  field  of 
imagination,  though  It  may  have  considerably 
changed  the  methods  of  treatment.  The  success 
of  writers  today  like  Maeterlinck  is  chiefly  ex- 
plained by  their  skill  In  the  treatment  of  the 
ghostly,  and  of  subjects  related  to  supernatural 
fear.  But  without  citing  other  living  writers,  let 
me  observe  that  there  Is  scarcely  any  really  great 
author  in  European  Hterature,  old  or  new,  who 

130 


SUPERNATURAL  IN  FICTION     131 

has  not  distinguished  himself  in  the  treatment  of 
the  supernatural.  In  English  literature,  I  be- 
lieve there  is  no  exception  —  even  from  the  time 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  poets  to  Shakespeare,  and 
from  Shakespeare  to  our  own  day.  And  this  in- 
troduces us  to  the  consideration  of  a  general  and 
remarkable  fact,  a  fact  that  I  do  not  remember 
to  have  seen  in  any  books,  but  which  is  of  very 
great  philosophical  importance;  there  is  some- 
thing ghostly  in  all  great  art,  whether  of  litera- 
ture, music,  sculpture,  or  architecture. 

But  now  let  me  speak  to  you  about  this  word 
"ghostly";  it  is  a  much  bigger  word,  perhaps, 
than  some  of  you  imagine.  The  old  English  had 
no  other  word  for  "  spiritual  "  or  "  supernatural  " 
—  which  two  terms,  you  know,  are  not  English  but 
Latin.  Everything  that  religion  today  calls  di- 
vine, holy,  miraculous,  was  sufficiently  explained 
for  the  old  Anglo-Saxons  by  the  term  ghostly. 
They  spoke  of  a  man's  ghost,  instead  of  speaking 
of  his  spirit  or  soul;  and  everything  relating  to 
religious  knowledge  they  called  ghostly.  In  the 
modern  formula  of  the  Catholic  confession,  which 
has  remained  almost  unchanged  for  nearly  two 
thousand  years,  you  will  find  that  the  priest  is  al- 
ways called  a  "ghostly"  father  —  which  means 
that  his  business  is  to  take  care  of  the  ghosts  or 
souls  of  men  as  a  father  does.  In  addressing  the 
priest,  the  penitent  really  calls  him  "  Father  of 


132  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

my  ghost.''  You  will  see,  therefore,  that  a  very- 
large  meaning  really  attaches  to  the  adjective. 
It  means  everything  relating  to  the  supernatural. 
It  means  to  the  Christian  even  God  himself,  for 
the  Giver  of  Life  is  always  called  in  Enghsh  the 
Holy  Ghost. 

Accepting  the  evolutional  philosophy  which 
teaches  that  the  modern  idea  of  God  as  held  by 
western  nations  is  really  but  a  development  from 
the  primitive  belief  in  a  shadow-soul,  the  term 
ghost  in  its  reference  to  the  Supreme  Being  cer- 
tainly could  not  be  found  fault  with.  On  the 
contrary,  there  Is  a  weirdness  about  this  use  of  the 
word  which  adds  greatly  to  its  solemnity.  But 
whatever  belief  we  have,  or  have  not,  as  regards 
religious  creeds,  one  thing  that  modern  science  has 
done  for  us,  is  to  prove  beyond  all  question  that 
everything  which  we  used  to  consider  material 
and  solid  is  essentially  ghostly,  as  is  any  ghost. 
If  we  do  not  believe  in  old-fashioned  stories  and 
theories  about  ghosts,  we  are  nevertheless  obliged 
to  recognize  today  that  we  are  ghosts  of  ourselves 
—  and  utterly  incomprehensible.  The  mystery 
of  the  universe  is  now  weighing  upon  us,  becoming 
heavier  and  heavier,  more  and  more  awful,  as 
our  knowledge  expands,  and  it  is  especially  a 
ghostly  mystery.  All  great  art  reminds  us  In 
some  way  of  this  universal  riddle;  that  is  why  I 
say  that  all  great  art  has  something  ghostly  in  It. 


SUPERNATURAL  IN  FICTION     133 

It  touches  something  within  us  which  relates  to 
infinity.  When  you  read  a  very  great  thought, 
when  you  see  a  wonderful  picture  or  statue  or 
building,  and  when  you  hear  certain  kinds  of 
music,  you  feel  a  thrill  in  the  heart  and  mind 
much  like  the  thrill  which  In  all  times  men  felt 
when  they  thought  they  saw  a  ghost  or  a  god. 
Only  the  modern  thrill  is  Incomparably  larger 
and  longer  and  deeper.  And  this  Is  why,  In 
spite  of  all  knowledge,  the  world  still  finds  pleas- 
ure In  the  literature  of  the  supernatural,  and  will 
continue  to  find  pleasure  In  it  for  hundreds  of 
years  to  come.  The  ghostly  represents  always 
some  shadow  of  truth,  and  no  amount  of  disbe- 
lief In  what  used  to  be  called  ghosts  can  ever  di- 
minish human  Interest  in  what  relates  to  that 
truth. 

So  you  will  see  that  the  subject  Is  not  alto- 
gether trifling.  Certainly  it  is  of  very  great  mo- 
ment In  relation  to  great  literature.  The  poet 
or  the  story-teller  who  cannot  give  the  reader  a 
little  ghostly  pleasure  at  times  never  can  be  either 
a  really  great  writer  or  a  great  thinker.  I  have 
already  said  that  I  know  of  no  exception  to  this 
rule  In  the  whole  of  English  literature.  Take, 
for  Instance,  Macaulay,  the  most  practical,  hard- 
headed,  logical  writer  of  the  century,  the  last 
man  In  whom  you  would  expect  to  find  the  least 
trace  of  superstition.     Had  you  read  only  certain 


134  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

of  his  essays,  you  would  scarcely  think  him  ca- 
pable of  touching  the  chords  of  the  supernatural. 
But  he  has  done  this  in  a  masterly  way  in  several 
of  the  "  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome  " —  for  example, 
in  speaking  of  the  apparition  of  the  Twin  Breth- 
ren at  the  battle  of  Lake  Regillus,  and  of  Tar- 
quin  haunted  by  the  phantom  of  his  victim  Lucre- 
tla.  Both  of  these  passages  give  the  ghostly 
thrill  in  a  strong  way;  and  there  Is  a  fainter  thrill 
of  the  same  sort  to  be  experienced  from  the  read- 
ing of  parts  of  the  "  Prophecy  of  Capys."  It 
Is  because  Macaulay  had  this  power,  though  using 
it  sparingly,  that  his  work  is  so  great.  If  he  had 
not  been  able  to  write  these  Hnes  of  poetry  which 
I  referred  to,  he  could  not  even  have  made  his  his- 
tory of  England  the  living  history  that  it  is.  A 
man  who  has  no  ghostly  feeling  cannot  make  any- 
thing alive,  not  even  a  page  of  history  or  a  page 
of  oratory.  To  touch  men's  souls,  you  must  know 
all  that  those  souls  can  be  made  to  feel  by  words; 
and  to  know  that,  you  must  yourself  have  a 
*'  ghost "  in  you  that  can  be  touched  in  the  same 
way. 

Now  leaving  the  theoretical  for  the  practical 
part  of  the  theme,  let  us  turn  to  the  subject  of 
the  relation  between  ghosts  and  dreams. 

No  good  writer  —  no  great  writer  —  ever 
makes  a  study  of  the  supernatural  according  to 
anything  which  has  been  done  before  by  other 


SUPERNATURAL  IN  FICTION     135 

writers.  This  is  one  of  those  subjects  upon  which 
you  cannot  get  real  help  from  books.  It  is  not 
from  books,  nor  from  traditions,  nor  from  leg- 
ends, nor  from  anything  of  that  kind  that  you 
can  learn  how  to  give  your  reader  a  ghostly  thrill. 
I  do  not  mean  that  it  is  of  no  use  for  you  to  read 
what  has  been  written  upon  the  subject,  so  far 
as  mere  methods  of  expression,  mere  effects  of 
literary  workmanship,  are  concerned.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  very  important  that  you  should  read 
all  you  can  of  what  is  good  in  literature  upon 
these  subjects;  you  will  learn  from  them  a  great 
deal  about  curious  values  of  words,  about  com- 
pactness and  power  of  sentences,  about  peculiari- 
ties of  beliefs  and  of  terrors  relating  to  those  be- 
liefs. But  you  must  never  try  to  use  another 
man's  ideas  or  feelings,  taken  from  a  book,  in 
order  to  make  a  supernatural  effect.  If  you  do, 
the  work  will  never  be  sincere,  and  will  never  make 
a  thrill.  You  must  use  your  own  ideas  and  feel- 
ings only,  under  all  possible  circumstances.  And 
where  are  you  to  get  these  ideas  and  feelings 
from,  if  you  do  not  beheve  in  ghosts?  From 
your  dreams.  Whether  you  believe  in  ghosts  or 
not,  all  the  artistic  elements  of  ghostly  literature 
exist  in  your  dreams,  and  form  a  veritable  treas- 
ury of  literary  material  for  the  man  that  knows 
how  to  use  them. 

All  the  great  effects  obtained  by  poets  and  story 


136  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

writers,  and  even  by  religious  teachers,  in  the 
treatment  of  supernatural  fear  or  mystery,  have 
been  obtained,  directly  or  indirectly,  through 
dreams.  Study  any  great  ghost  story  in  any  lit- 
erature, and  you  will  find  that  no  matter  how  sur- 
prising or  unfamiliar  the  incidents  seem,  a  little 
patient  examination  will  prove  to  you  that  every 
one  of  them  has  occurred,  at  different  times,  in 
different  combinations,  in  dreams  of  your  own. 
They  give  you  a  thrill.  But  why?  Because  they 
remind  you  of  experiences,  imaginative  or  emo- 
tional, which  you  had  forgotten.  There  can  be 
no  exception  to  this  rule  —  absolutely  none.  I 
was  speaking  to  you  the  other  day  about  a  short 
story  by  Bulwer  Lytton,  as  being  the  best  ghost 
story  in  the  English  language.  The  reason  why 
it  is  the  best  story  of  this  kind  is  simply  because 
it  represents  with  astonishing  faithfulness  the 
experiences  of  nightmare.  The  terror  of  all  great 
stories  of  the  supernatural  is  really  the  terror  of 
nightmare,  projected  into  waking  consciousness. 
And  the  beauty  or  tenderness  of  other  ghost 
stories  or  fairy-stories,  or  even  of  certain  famous 
and  delightful  religious  legends,  is  the  tenderness 
and  beauty  of  dreams  of  a  happier  kind,  dreams 
inspired  by  love  or  hope  or  regret.  But  in  all 
cases  where  the  supernatural  is  well  treated  in 
literature,  dream  experience  is  the  source  of  the 
treatment.     I  know  that  I  am  now  speaking  to  an 


SUPERNATURAL  IN  FICTION     137 

audience  acquainted  with  literature  of  which  I 
know  practically  nothing.  But  I  believe  that 
there  can  be  no  exception  to  these  rules  even  in 
the  literature  of  the  Far  East.  I  do  not  mean 
to  say  that  there  may  not  be  in  Chinese  and  in 
Japanese  literature  many  ghost  stories  which  are 
not  derived  from  dream-experience.  But  I  will 
say  that  if  there  are  any  of  this  kind,  they  are 
not  worth  reading,  and  cannot  belong  to  any  good 
class  of  literature.  I  have  read  translations  of 
a  number  of  Chinese  ghost  stories  in  French,  also 
a  wonderful  English  translation  of  ghostly  Chinese 
stories  in  two  volumes,  entitled  *'  Strange  Stories 
from  a  Chinese  Studio  "  by  Herbert  Giles.  These 
stories,  translated  by  a  great  scholar,  are  very 
wonderful;  but  I  noticed  that  in  every  successful 
treatment  of  a  supernatural  subject,  the  incidents 
of  the  story  invariably  correspond  with  the  phe- 
nomena of  dreams.  Therefore  I  think  that  I 
cannot  be  mistaken  in  my  judgment  of  the  matter. 
Such  Japanese  stories  as  I  could  get  translations 
of,  obeyed  the  same  rule.  The  other  day,  in  a 
story  which  I  read  for  the  first  time,  I  was  very 
much  interested  to  find  an  exact  parallel  between 
the  treatment  of  a  supernatural  idea  by  the  Japa- 
nese author,  and  by  the  best  English  author  of 
dream  studies.  The  story  was  about  a  picture, 
painted  upon  a  screen,  representing  a  river  and  a 
landscape.     In  the  Japanese   story    (perhaps   it 


138  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

has  a  Chinese  origin)  the  painter  makes  a  sign 
to  the  screen;  and  a  little  boat  begins  to  sail  down 
the  river,  and  sails  out  of  the  picture  into  the 
room,  and  the  room  becomes  full  of  water,  and  the 
painter,  or  magician,  or  whoever  he  is,  gets  into 
the  boat  and  sails  away  into  the  picture  again,  and 
disappears  forever.  This  is  exactly,  in  every  de- 
tail, a  dream  story,  and  the  excellence  of  it  is  in 
its  truth  to  dream  experience.  The  same  phe- 
nomena you  will  find,  under  another  form,  in 
"  AHce  in  Wonderland,"  and  "  Through  the  Look- 
ing Glass." 

But  to  return  to  the  point  where  we  left  off. 
I  was  saying  that  all  successful  treatment  of  the 
ghostly  or  the  impossible  must  be  made  to  corre- 
spond as  much  as  possible  with  the  truth  of  dream 
experience,  and  that  Bulwer  Lytton's  story  of  the 
haunted  house  illustrates  the  rule.  Let  us  now 
consider  especially  the  literary  value  of  nightmare. 
Nightmare,  the  most  awful  form  of  dream,  is  also 
one  of  the  most  peculiar.  It  has  probably  fur- 
nished all  the  important  elements  of  religious  and 
supernatural  terror  which  are  to  be  found  in  really 
great  literature.  It  is  a  mysterious  thing  in  it- 
self; and  scientific  psychology  has  not  yet  been 
able  to  explain  many  facts  in  regard  to  it.  We 
can  take  the  phenomena  of  nightmare  separately, 
one  by  one,  and  show  their  curious  relation  to 


SUPERNATURAL  IN  FICTION     139 

various  kinds  of  superstitious  fear  and  supernat- 

ural  belief. 

The  first  remarkable  fact  in  nightmare  is  the 
beginning  of  it.  It  begins  with  a  kind  of  suspi- 
cion, usually.  You  feel  afraid  without  knowing 
why.  Then  you  have  the  impression  that  some- 
thing is  acting  upon  you  from  a  distance  —-  some- 
thing like  fascination,  yet  not  exactly  fascination, 
for  there  may  be  no  visible  fascinator.  But  feel- 
ing uneasy,  you  wish  to  escape,  to  get  away  from 
the  influence  that  is  making  you  afraid.  Then 
you  find  it  is  not  easy  to  escape.  You  move  with 
great  difficulty.     Presently  the  difficulty  increases 

you  cannot  move  at  all.     You  want  to  cry  out, 

and  you  cannot;  you  have  lost  your  voice.  You 
are  actually  in  a  state  of  trance  —  seeing,  hear- 
ing, feeling,  but  unable  to  move  or  speak.  This 
is  the  beginning.  It  forms  one  of  the  most  ter- 
rible emotions  from  which  a  man  can  suffer.  ^  If 
it  continued  more  than  a  certain  length  of  time, 
the  mere  fear  might  kill.  Nightmare  does  some- 
times kill,  in  cases  where  the  health  has  been  very 
much  affected  by  other  causes. 

Of  course  we  have  nothing  in  ordinary  waking 
life  of  such  experience  —  the  feeling  of  being  de- 
prived of  will  and  held  fast  from  a  great  dis- 
tance by  some  viewless  power.  This  is  the  real 
experience  of  magnetism,  mesmerism;  and  it  is 


I40  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

the  origin  of  certain  horrible  beliefs  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  In  regard  to  magical  power.  Suppose 
we  call  it  supernatural  mesmerism,  for  want  of 
a  better  word.  It  is  not  true  mesmerism,  because 
in  real  hypnotic  conditions,  the  patient  does  not 
feel  or  think  or  act  mentally  according  to  his  own 
personality;  he  acts  by  the  will  of  another.  In 
nightmare  the  will  Is  only  suspended,  and  the  per- 
sonal consciousness  remains;  this  Is  what  makes 
the  horror  of  it.  So  we  shall  call  the  first  stage 
supernatural  mesmerism,  only  with  the  above  qual- 
ification. Now  let  us  see  how  Bulwer  Lytton 
uses  this  experience  in  his  story. 

A  man  is  sitting  in  a  chair,  with  a  lamp  on  the 
table  beside  him,  and  is  reading  Macaulay's  es- 
says, when  he  suddenly  becomes  uneasy.  A 
shadow  falls  upon  the  page.  He  rises,  and  tries 
to  call ;  but  he  cannot  raise  his  voice  above  a  whis- 
per. He  tries  to  move ;  and  he  cannot  stir  hand 
or  foot.  The  spell  is  already  upon  him.  This  is 
the  first  part  of  nightmare. 

The  second  stage  of  the  phenomenon,  which 
sometimes  mingles  with  the  first  stage,  is  the  ex- 
perience of  terrible  and  unnatural  appearances. 
There  is  always  a  darkening  of  the  visible,  some- 
times a  disappearance  or  dimming  of  the  light. 
In  Bulwer  Lytton's  story  there  Is  a  fire  burning 
in  the  room,  and  a  very  bright  lamp.  Gradually 
both  lamp  and  fire  become  dimmer  and  dimmer; 


SUPERNATURAL  IN  FICTION     141 

at  last  all  light  completely  vanishes,  and  the  room 
becomes  absolutely  dark,  except  for  spectral  and 
unnatural  luminosities  that  begin  to  make  their 
appearance.  This  also  is  a  very  good  study  of 
dream,  experience.  The  third  stage  of  nightmarft> 
the  final  struggle,  is  chiefly  characterized  by  im- 
possible occurrences,  which  bring  to  the  dreamer 
the  extreme  form  of  horror,  while  convincing  him 
of  his  own  impotence.  For  example,  you  try  to 
fire  a  pistol  or  to  use  a  steel  weapon.  If  a  pistol, 
the  bullet  will  not  project  itself  more  than  a  few 
inches  from  the  muzzle;  then  it  drops  down 
limply,  and  there  is  no  report.  If  a  sword  or 
dagger,  the  blade  becomes  soft,  like  cotton  or 
paper.  Terrible  appearances,  monstrous  or  un- 
natural figures,  reach  out  hands  to  touch;  if  hu- 
man figures,  they  will  grow  to  the  ceiling,  and 
bend  themselves  fantastically  as  they  approach. 
There  is  one  more  stage,  which  is  not  often 
reached  —  the  climax  of  the  horror.  That  is 
when  you  are  caught  or  touched.  The  touch  in 
nightmare  is  a  very  peculiar  sensation,  almost  like 
an  electric  shock,  but  unnaturally  prolonged.  It 
is  not  pain,  but  something  worse  than  pain,  an 
experience  never  felt  in  waking  hours. 

The  third  and  fourth  stages  have  been  artis- 
tically mixed  together  by  Bulwer  Lytton.  The 
phantom  towers  from  floor  to  ceiling,  vague  and 
threatening;  the  man  attempts  to  use  a  weapon, 


142  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

and  at  the  same  time  receives  a  touch  or  shock 
that  renders  him  absolutely  powerless.  He  de- 
scribes the  feeling  as  resembling  the  sensation  of 
some  ghostly  electricity.  The  study  Is  exactly 
true  to  dream-experience.  I  need  not  here  men- 
tion this  story  further,  since  from  this  point  a 
great  many  other  elements  enter  into  it  which, 
though  not  altogether  foreign  to  our  subject,  djo 
not  illustrate  that  subject  so  well  as  some  of  the 
stories  of  Poe.  Poe  has  given  us  other  peculiar 
details  of  nightmare-experience,  such  as  horrible 
sounds.  Often  we  hear  in  such  dreams  terrible 
muffled  noises,  as  of  steps  coming.  This  you  will 
find  very  well  studied  in  the  story  called  "  The 
Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher."  Again  in  these 
dreams  inanimate  objects  either  become  alive,  or 
suggest  to  us,  by  their  motion,  the  hiding  of  some 
horrible  life  behind  them  —  curtains,  for  exam- 
ple, doors  left  half  open,  alcoves  imperfectly 
closed.  Poe  has  studied  these  in  "  Eleonora  " 
and  In  some  other  sketches. 

Dreams  of  the  terrible  have  beyond  question 
had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  the  inspiration  both 
of  rehgious  and  of  superstitious  literature.  The 
returning  of  the  dead,  visions  of  heavenly  or  in- 
fernal beings, —  these,  when  well  described,  are 
almost  always  exact  reproductions  of  dream-ex- 
perience. But  occasionally  we  find  an  element  of 
waking  fear  mixed  with  them  —  for  example,  in 


SUPERNATURAL  IN  FICTION     143 

one  of  the  oldest  ghost  stories  of  the  worid,  the 
story  in  "  The  Book  of  Job."  The  poet  speaks 
of  feeling  intense  cold,  and  feeling  the  hairs  of 
his  head  stand  up  with  fear.  These  experiences 
are  absolutely  true,  and  they  belong  to  waking 
life.  The  sensation  of  cold  and  the  sensation  of 
horror  are  not  sensations  of  dreams.  They  come 
from  extraordinary  terror  felt  in  active  existence, 
while  we  are  awake.  You  will  observe  the  very 
same  signs  of  fear  in  a  horse,  a  dog,  or  a  cat  — 
and  there  is  reason  to  suppose  that  in  these  animal 
cases,  also,  supernatural  fear  is  sometimes  a  cause. 
I  have  seen  a  dog  —  a  brave  dog,  too  —  terribly 
frightened  by  seeing  a  mass  of  paper  moved  by 
a  slight  current  of  air.  This  slight  wind  did  not 
reach  the  place  where  the  dog  was  lying;  he  could 
not  therefore  associate  the  motion  of  the  paper 
with  a  motion  of  the  wind;  he  did  not  understand 
what  was  moving  the  paper;  the  mystery  alarmed 
him,  and  the  hair  on  his  back  stood  up  with  fear. 
But  the  mingling  of  such  sensations  of  waking  fear 
with  dream  sensations  of  fear,  in  a  story  or  poem, 
may  be  very  effectually  managed,  so  as  to  give 
to  the  story  an  air  of  reality,  of  actuality,  which 
could  not  be  obtained  in  any  other  way.  A  great 
many  of  our  old  fairy  ballads  and  goblin  stories 
mixed  the  two  experiences  together  with  the  most 
excellent  results.  I  should  say  that  the  fine  Ger- 
man story  of  ''  Undine  "  is  a  good  example  of 


144  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

this  kind.  The  sight  of  the  faces  in  the  water  of 
the  river,  the  changing  of  waterfalls  and  cataracts 
into  ghostly  people,  the  rising  from  the  closed 
well  of  the  form  of  Undine  herself,  the  rising  of 
the  flood  behind  her,  and  the  way  in  which  she 
"  weeps  her  lover  to  death  " —  all  this  is  pure 
dream;  and  it  seems  real  because  most  of  us  have 
had  some  such  experiences  of  fancy  in  our  own 
dreams.  But  the  other  part  of  the  story  deal- 
ing with  human  emotions,  fears,  passions  —  these 
are  of  waking  life,  and  the  mixture  is  accom- 
plished in  a  most  artistic  way.  Speaking  of  Un- 
dine obliges  me  also  to  speak  of  Undine's  prede- 
cessors In  mediaeval  literature  —  the  mediaeval 
spirits,  the  succuha  and  incubi,  the  sylphs  and  sala- 
manders or  salamandrlnes,  the  whole  wonderful 
goblin  population  of  water,  air,  forest,  and  fire. 
All  the  good  stories  about  them  are  really  dream 
studies.  And  coming  down  to  the  most  romantic 
literature  of  our  own  day,  the  same  thing  must  be 
said  of  those  strange  and  delightful  stories  by 
Gautier,  "  La  Morte  Amoureuse,"  "  Arria  Mar- 
cella,"  "  Le  Pied  de  Momle."  The  most  remark- 
able is  perhaps  "  La  Morte  Amoureuse  " ;  but 
there  Is  in  this  a  study  of  double  personality,  which 
complicates  it  too  much  for  purposes  of  present 
illustration.  I  shall  therefore  speak  of  "  Arria 
Marcella  "  Instead.  Some  young  students  visit 
the  city  of  Pompeii,  to  study  the  ruins  and  the 


SUPERNATURAL  IN  FICTION     145 

curiosities  preserved  in  the  museum  of  Naples, 
nearby.  All  of  them  are  familiar  with  classic 
literature  and  classic  history;  moreover,  they  are 
artists,  able  to  appreciate  the  beauty  of  what  they 
see.  At  the  time  of  the  eruption,  which  occurred 
nearly  two  thousand  years  ago,  many  people  per- 
ished by  being  smothered  under  the  rain  of  ashes; 
but  their  bodies  were  encased  in  the  deposit  so  that 
the  form  was  perfectly  preserved  as  In  a  mould. 
Some  of  these  moulds  are  to  be  seen  in  the  mu- 
seum mentioned;  and  one  Is  the  mould  of  the  body 
of  a  beautiful  young  woman.  The  younger  of  the 
three  students  sees  this  mould,  and  romantically 
wishes  that  he  could  see  and  love  the  real  per- 
son, so  m^any  centuries  dead.  That  night,  while 
his  companions  are  asleep,  he  leaves  his  room  and 
wanders  Into  the  ruined  city,  for  the  pleasure  of 
thinking  all  by  himself.  But  presently,  as  he 
turns  the  corner  of  a  street,  he  finds  that  the  city 
looks  quite  different  from  what  It  had  appeared 
by  day;  the  houses  seem  to  have  grown  taller; 
they  look  new,  bright,  clean.  While  he  Is  thus 
wandering,  suddenly  the  sun  rises,  and  the  streets 
fill  with  people  —  not  the  people  of  today,  but 
the  people  of  two  thousand  years  ago,  all  dressed 
in  the  old  Greek  and  Roman  costumes.  After  a 
time  a  young  Greek  comes  up  to  the  student  and 
speaks  to  him  in  Latin.  He  has  learned  enough 
Latin  at  the  university  to  be  able  to  answer,  and 


146  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

a  conversation  begins,  of  which  the  result  is  that 
he  is  invited  to  the  theatre  of  Pompeii  to  see  the 
gladiators  and  other  amusements  of  the  time. 
While  in  this  theatre,  he  suddenly  sees  the  woman 
that  he  wanted  to  see,  the  woman  whose  figure 
was  preserved  in  the  Naples  museum.  After  the 
theatre,  he  is  invited  to  her  house;  and  everything 
is  very  delightful  until  suddenly  the  girl's  father 
appears  on  the  scene.  The  old  man  is  a  Chris- 
tian, and  he  is  very  angry  that  the  ghost  of  his 
daughter  should  receive  a  young  man  in  this  man-  I 
ner.  He  makes  a  sign  of  the  cross,  and  imme- 
diately poor  Arria  crumbles  into  dust,  and  the  i 
young  man  finds  himself  alone  in  the  ruins  of 
Pompeii.  Very  beautiful  this  story  is;  but  every  ' 
detail  in  it  is  dream  study.  I  have  given  so  much 
mention  to  it  only  because  it  seems  to  me  the  very 
finest  French  example  of  this  artistic  use  of  dream  ; 
experience.  But  how  many  other  romances  be-  i 
long  to  the  same  category?  I  need  only  mention 
among  others  Irving's  "  The  Adalantado  of  the 
Seven  Cities,"  which  is  pure  dream,  so  realistically 
told  that  it  gives  the  reader  the  sensation  of  being 
asleep.  Although  such  romances  as  "  The  Seven 
Sleepers,"  "  Rip  Van  Winkle,"  and  "  Urashima," 
are  not,  on  the  other  hand,  pure  dreams,  yet  the 
charm  of  them  is  just  in  that  part  where  dream 
experience  is  used.  The  true  romance  in  all  is 
in  the  old  man's  dream  of  being  young,  and  wak- 


SUPERNATURAL  IN  FICTION    147 

ing  up  to  cold  and  grave  realities.  By  the  way, 
in  the  old  French  lays  of  Marie  de  France,  there 
is  an  almost  precisely  similar  story  to  the  Japa- 
nese one  —  similar,  at  least,  at  all  points  except 
the  story  of  the  tortoise.  It  is  utterly  impossible 
that  the  oriental  and  the  occidental  story-tellers 
could  have,  either  of  them,  borrowed  from  the 
other;  more  probably  each  story  is  a  spontaneous 
!;  growth.  But  it  is  curious  to  find  the  legend  sub- 
stantially the  same  in  other  literatures  —  Indian 
and  Arabian  and  Javanese.  In  all  of  the  ver- 
1  sions  the  one  romantic  truth  is  ever  the  same  — 
a  dream  truth. 

Now  besides  the  artistic  elements  of  terror  and 
of  romance,  dreams  certainly  furnish  us  with  the 
most  penetrating  and  beautiful  qualities  of  ghostly 
tenderness  that  literature  contains.  For  the  dead 
people  that  we  loved  all  come  back  to  us  occa- 
sionally in  dreams,  and  look  and  talk  as  if  they 
were  actually  alive,  and  become  to  us  everything 
that  we  could  have  wished  them  to  be.  In  a 
dream-meeting  with  the  dead,  you  must  have  ob- 
served how  everything  is  gentle  and  beautiful,  and 
yet  how  real,  how  true  it  seems.  From  the  most 
ancient  times  such  visions  of  the  dead  have  fur- 
nished literature  with  the  most  touching  and  the 
most  exquisite  passages  of  unselfish  affection.  We 
find  this  experience  in  nearly  all  the  ancient  ballad- 
literature  of  Europe;  we  find  it  in  all  the  world's 


148  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

epics;  we  find  it  in  every  kind  of  superior  poetry; 
and  modern  literature  draws  from  it  more  and 
more  as  the  years  go  by.  Even  in  such  strange 
compositions  as  the  "  Kalevala  "  of  the  Finns,  an 
epic  totally  unlike  any  other  ever  written  in  this 
world,  the  one  really  beautiful  passage  in  an  emo- 
tional sense  is  the  coming  back  of  the  dead  mother 
to  comfort  the  wicked  son,  which  is  a  dream  study, 
though  not  so  represented  in  the  poem. 

Yet  one  thing  more.  Our  dreams  of  heaven, 
what  are  they  in  literature  but  reflections  in  us 
of  the  more  beautiful  class  of  dreams?  In  the 
world  of  sleep  all  the  dead  people  we  loved  meet 
us  again;  the  father  recovers  his  long-buried  child, 
the  husband  his  lost  wife,  separated  lovers  find 
the  union  that  was  impossible  in  this  world,  those 
whom  we  lost  sight  of  in  early  years  —  dead  sis- 
ters, brothers,  friends  —  all  come  back  to  us  just 
as  they  were  then,  just  as  loving,  and  as  young, 
and  perhaps  even  more  beautiful  than  they  could 
really  have  been.  In  the  world  of  sleep  there  is 
no  growing  old;  there  is  immortality,  there  is 
everlasting  youth.  And  again  how  soft,  how 
happy  everything  is;  even  the  persons  unkind  to 
us  in  waking  life  become  affectionate  to  us  in 
dreams.  Well,  what  is  heaven  but  this?  Reli- 
gion in  painting  perfect  happiness  for  the  good, 
only  describes  the  best  of  our  dream-life,  which 
is  also  the  best  of  our  waking  life;  and  I  think 


SUPERNATURAL  IN  FICTION     149 

you  will  find  that  the  closer  religion  has  kept  to 
dream  experience  in  these  descriptions,  the  hap- 
pier has  been  the  result.  Perhaps  you  will  say 
that  I  have  forgotten  how  religion  teaches  the  ap- 
parition of  supernatural  powers  of  a  very  peculiar 
kind.  But  I  think  that  you  will  find  the  sugges- 
tion for  these  powers  also  in  dream-life.  Do  we 
not  pass  through  the  air  In  dreams,  pass  through 
solid  substances,  perform  all  kinds  of  miracles, 
achieve  all  sorts  of  impossible  things?  I  think  we 
do.  At  all  events,  I  am  certain  that  when,  as 
men-of-letters,  you  have  to  deal  with  any  form 
of  supernatural  subject  —  whether  terrible,  or 
tender,  or  pathetic,  or  splendid  —  you  will  do 
well,  if  you  have  a  good  imagination,  not  to  trust 
to  books  for  your  inspiration.  Trust  to  your  own 
dream-life;  study  it  carefully,  and  draw  your  in- 
spiration from  that.  For  dreams  are  the  primary 
source  of  almost  everything  that  is  beautiful  In 
the  literature  which  treats  of  what  lies  beyond 
mere  daily  experience. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   QUESTION   OF   THE    HIGHEST   ART 

In  taking  this  title  for  the  present  short  lec- 
ture, I  have  not  said  *'  literary  art,"  but  simply 
art.  That  is  because  I  think  that  all  the  arts 
are  so  related  to  each  other,  and  to  some  form  of 
highest  truth,  that  each  obeys  the  same  laws  as 
the  others,  and  manifests  the  same  principles.  Of 
course  I  intend  to  refer  especially  to  literary  art; 
but  in  order  to  do  this  effectually,  I  must  first 
speak  about  art  in  general. 

I  take  it  that  art  signifies  the  emotional  ex- 
pression of  life  in  some  form  or  other.  This  may 
be  expressed  in  music,  in  painting,  In  sculpture,  in 
poetry,  in  drama,  or  in  fiction.  Truth  to  life  is 
the  object  even  of  the  best  fiction  —  though  the 
story  in  itself  may  not  be  true,  or  may  even  be 
impossible.  But  it  has  of  course  been  said  that 
the  kinds  of  art  are  almost  innumerable.  The 
question  that  I  want  to  answer  is  this.  What  is 
the  highest  form  of  art? 

Without  attempting  to  discuss  the  different 
kinds  of  art  in  any  way,  I  think  we  may  fairly 
assume  that  intellectual  life  represents  something 
higher  than  physical  life,   and  that  ethical  life 

150 


THE  HIGHEST  ART  151 

represents  something  higher  still.  In  short,  the 
position  of  Spencer  that  moral  beauty  is  far  su- 
perior to  intellectual  beauty,  ought  to  be  a  satis- 
factory guide  to  the  answer  of  this  question.  If 
moral  beauty  be  the  very  highest  possible  form 
of  beauty,  then  the  highest  possible  form  of  art 
should  be  that  which  expresses  it. 

I  do  not  think  that  anybody  would  deny  these 
premises  from  a  philosophical  point  of  view.  But 
the  mere  statement  that  moral  beauty  ought. to  be 
ranked  above  all  other  beauty,  and  that  the  high- 
est art  should  necessarily  express  moral  beauty,, 
leaves  a  vague  and  unsatisfactory  impression  upon 
the  mind.  It  is  not  very  easy  to  answer  the  ques- 
tion, How  can  music  or  painting  or  sculpture  or 
poetry  or  fiction  represent  moral  beauty?  And 
have  I  not  often  told  you  that  books  written  for 
a  moral  purpose  are  nearly  always  inartistic  and 
unsatisfactory? 

It  seems  to  me  that  a  solution  of  this  difficulty 
is  at  least  suggested  by  the  experience  of  love. 

To  love  another  human  being  is  really  a  moral 
experience,  although  this  fact  Is  very  commonly 
overlooked.  You  might  say.  That  is  all  very  fine,, 
but  how  can  it  be  a  moral  experience  to  love  a 
bad  person,  or  to  love  for  sense  and  self?  I 
shall  answer  that  the  selfish  side  of  the  feeling  has 
no  importance  at  all;  and  that  whether  the  per- 
son loved  be  good  or  bad  or  Indifferent  Is  also  of 


152  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

no  importance.  I  mean  that  the  experience  is 
not  at  all  affected  as  to  its  moral  side  by  the  im- 
morahty  of  the  conditions  of  it.  Certainly  it  is  a 
great  misfortune  and  a  great  folly  to  love  a  bad 
person;  but  in  spite  of  the  misfortune  and  the 
folly  a  certain  moral  experience  comes,  which  has 
immense  value  to  a  wholesome  nature.  The  ex- 
perience is  one  which  very  few  of  the  poets  and 
philosophers  dwell  upon;  yet  it  is  the  only  im- 
portant, the  supremely  important,  part  of  the  ex- 
perience. What  is  it?  It  is  the  sudden  impulse 
to  unselfishness.  For  there  are  two  sides  to  every 
passion  of  love  in  a  normal  human  life.  One  side 
is  selfish;  the  other  side,  and  the  stronger,  is  un- 
selfish. In  other  words,  one  of  the  first  results 
of  truly  loving  another  human  being  is  the  sudden 
wish  to  die  for  the  sake  of  that  person,  to  endure 
anything,  to  attempt  anything  dlflficult  or  danger- 
ous for  the  benefit  of  the  person  beloved.  That  is 
what  Tennyson  refers  to  in  the  celebrated  verse 
about  the  chord  of  Self  suddenly  disappearing. 
The  impulse  to  self-sacrifice  is  the  moral  expe- 
rience of  loving;  and  this  experience  is  not  neces- 
sarily confined  to  the  kind  of  affection  described 
by  Tennyson.  Other  forms  of  love  may  produce 
the  same  result.  Strong  faith  may  do  it.  Pa- 
triotism may  do  it.  I  have  only  mentioned  the 
ordinary  form  of  love,  because  it  is  the  most  uni- 
versal experience,  and  most  likely  to  produce  the 


THE  HIGHEST  ART  153 

moral  Impulse,  the  unselfish  desire  to  suffer  pain, 
to  suffer  loss,  or  even  to  suffer  death,  for  the  sake 
of  a  person  loved. 

I  know  that  mere  beauty  of  form  may  produce 
such  emotion,  though  beauty  of  form  Is  by  no 
means  the  highest  source  of  moral  inspiration. 
There  is  a  possible  relation  between  physical  and 
moral  beauty;  but  It  does  not  seem  to  be  a  rela- 
tion now  often  realized  in  this  imperfect  world. 
Intellectual  beauty  never,  I  think,  excites  our  af- 
fection —  though  it  may  excite  our  admiration. 
Moral  beauty,  the  highest  of  all,  has  indeed  been 
a  supreme  source  of  unselfish  action;  but  it  has 
moved  men's  minds  chiefly  through  superhuman 
ideals,  and  very  seldom  through  the  words  or  acts 
of  a  person,  an  Individual.  It  must  be  confessed 
that  in  a  person  we  are  much  more  ready  to  per- 
ceive the  lower  than  the  higher  forms  of  beauty. 

But  In  this  we  have  a  suggestion  of  possible 
values   In   regard  to   future   art.     Taking  it   for 
granted  that  some  forms  of  beauty  inspire  men 
with  such  affection  as  to  make  them  temporarily 
unselfish,  I  do  not  see  any  reason  to  doubt  that  in 
future  very  much  higher   forms   of  beauty  will 
produce  the  same  effect.     I  should  say  that  the\ 
highest  form  of  art  must  necessarily  be  such  art  as 
produces  upon  the  beholder  the  same  moral  effect  1 
that  the  passion  of  love  produces  In  a  generous  \ 
lover.     Such  art  would  be  a  revelation  of  moral 


154  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

beauty  for  which  it  were  worth  while  to  sacrifice 
self, —  of  moral  ideas  for  which  it  were  a  beauti- 
ful thing  to  die.  Such  an  art  ought  to  fill  men 
even  with  a  passionate  desire  to  give  up  life,  pleas- 
ure, everything,  for  the  sake  of  some  grand  and 
noble  purpose.  Just  as  unselfishness  is  the  real\ 
test  of  strong  affection,  so  unselfishness  ought  to 
be  the  real  test  of  the  very  highest  kind  of  art. 
Does  this  art  make  you  feel  generous,  make  you 
willing  to  sacrifice  yourself,  make  you  eager  to 
attempt  some  noble  undertaking?  If  it  does,  then 
it  belongs  to  the  higher  class  of  art,  if  not  to  the 
very  highest.  "  But  if  a  work  of  art,  whether 
sculpture  or  painting  or  poem  or  drama,  does  not 
make  us  feel  kindly,  more  generous,  morally  bet- 
ter than  we  were  before  seeing  it,  then  I  should 
say  that,  no  matter  how  clever,  It  does  not  belong 
to  the  highest  forms  of  art.* 

By  this  statement  I  do  not  mean  in  the  least 
to  decry  such  art  as  the  sculpture  of  the  Greeks, 
as  the  painting  of  the  Italians  —  not  at  all.  The 
impression  of  great  sculpture  and  a  great  painting, 
like  the  impression  of  grand  music,  is  to  make  us 
feel  more  kindly  to  ourTellowmen,  more  unselfish 
in  our  action,  more  exalted  in  our  aspirations. 
When  art  has  not  this  effect,  it  is  often  because 
the  nature  of  man  is  deficient,  not  because  his  art 
is  bad.  But  I  do  not  know  that  any  art  which 
has  existed  in  the  past  could  be  called  the  highest 


THE  HIGHEST  ART  155 

possible.  The  highest  possible  ought  to  be,  I 
think,  one  that  treats  of  ethical  ideals,  not  physical 
ideals,  and  of  which  the  effect  should  be  a  purely 
moral  enthusiasm.  Sculpture,  painting,  music, — 
these  arts  can  never,  I  imagine,  attempt  the  high- 
est art  in  the  sense  that  I  mean.  But  drama, 
poetry,  great  romance  or  fiction,  in  other  words, 
great  literature,  may  attempt  the  supreme,  and 
very  probably  will  do  so  at  some  future  time. 


CHAPTER  VI 

Tolstoi's  theory  of  art 

Last  year  I  gave  a  short  lecture  in  regard  to 
a  new  theory  of  art,  suggesting  that  the  highest 
form  of  any  kind  of  art  ought  to  have  the  effect 
of  exciting  a  noble  enthusiasm  and  a  sincere  de- 
sire of  self-sacrifice.  I  compared  the  ideal  ef- 
fect of  such  an  art  with  the  emotional  effect  of 
first  love  upon  a  generous  mind,  observing  that 
the  real  influence  of  a  generous  passion  is  intensely 
moral,  that  it  creates  a  desire  to  sacrifice  self. 
But  at  that  time  I  had  not  read  Tolstoi's  famous 
essay  upon  the  very  same  subject.  That  essay 
reinforces  a  great  many  truths  that  I  have  tried 
to  dwell  upon  in  other  lectures;  and  no  book  of 
the  present  time  has  excited  so  much  furious  dis- 
cussion. So  I  think  that  it  is  quite  important 
enough  to  talk  about  today.  As  university  stu- 
dents it  is  necessary  that  you  should  be  fully  ac- 
quainted with  what  is  going  on  in  the  literary 
world;  and  the  appearance  of  Tolstoi's  book  (it 
first  appeared  only  in  the  form  of  magazine  es- 
says) is  a  very  great  literary  event.  It  is  entitled 
in  the  French  version,  ''  Qu'est  ce  que  VArtf '' 

Before  going  any  further,  I  must  warn  you 

156 


TOLSTOI'S  THEORY  OF  ART     157 

not  to  allow  yourselves  to  be  prejudiced  against 
the  theory  by  anything  in  the  way  of  criticism 
made  upon  it.  One  of  the  most  important  things 
for  a  literary  student  to  learn  is  not  to  allow  his 
judgment  to  be  formed  by  other  people's  opin- 
ions. I  have  to  lecture  to  you  hoping  that  you 
will  keep  to  this  rule  even  in  regard  to  my  own 
opinion.  Do  not  think  that  something  is  good 
or  bad,  merely  because  I  say  so,  but  try  to  find  out 
for  yourself  by  unprejudiced  reading  and  think- 
ing whether  I  am  right  or  wrong.  In  the  case  of 
Tolstoi,  the  criticisms  have  been  so  fierce  and  in 
some  respects  so  well  founded,  that  even  I  hesi- 
tated for  a  moment  to  buy  the  book.  But  I  sus- 
pected very  soon  that  any  book  capable  of  mak- 
ing half  the  world  angry  on  the  subject  of  art 
must  be  a  book  of  great  power.  Indeed,  it  is 
rather  a  good  sign  that  a  man  is  worth  something, 
when  thousands  of  people  abuse  him  simply  for 
his  opinions.  And  now,  having  read  the  book,  I 
find  that  I  was  quite  right  in  my  reflections.  It 
is  a  very  great  book,  but  you  must  be  prepared 
for  starthng  errors  in  it,  extraordinary  misjudg- 
ments,  things  that  really  deserve  harsh  criticism. 
Many  great  thinkers  are  as  weak  in  some  one  di- 
rection as  they  happen  to  be  strong  in  another. 
Ruskin,  who  could  not  really  understand  Greek 
art,  and  who  resembled  Tolstoi  in  many  ways, 
was  a  man  of  this  kind,  inclined  to  abuse  what  he 


158  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

did  not  understand,  Japanese  art  not  less  than 
Greek  art.  About  Greek  art  one  of  his  judg- 
ments clearly  proves  the  limitation  of  his  faculty. 
He  said  that  the  Venus  de  Medici  was  a  very  un- 
interesting little  person.  Tolstoi  has  said  more 
extraordinary  things  than  that;  he  has  no  liking 
for  Shakespeare,  for  Dante,  for  other  men  whose 
fame  has  been  established  for  centuries.  He  de- 
nies at  once  whole  schools  of  literature,  whole 
schools  of  painting  and  whole  schools  of  music. 
If  the  wrong  things  which  he  has  said  were  picked 
out  of  his  book  and  printed  on  a  page  all  by  them- 
selves (this  has  been  done  by  some  critics),  you 
would  think  after  reading  that  page  that  Tolstoi 
had  become  suddenly  insane.  But  you  must  not 
mind  these  blemishes.  Certain  giants  must  never 
be  judged  by  their  errors,  but  only  by  their 
strength,  and  in  spite  of  all  faults  the  book  is  a 
book  which  will  make  anybody  think  in  a  new  and 
generous  way.  Moreover,  it  is  utterly  sincere  and 
unselfish  —  the  author  denouncing  even  his  own 
work,  the  wonderful  books  of  his  youth,  which 
won  for  him  the  very  highest  place  among  mod- 
ern novelists.  These,  he  now  tells  us,  are  not 
works  of  art. 

There  is  a  qualification  to  be  made  in  regard  to 
all  this.  Tolstoi  does  not  deny  that  most  art 
that  he  condemns  Is  art  in  a  narrow  sense;  he 
means  that  it  is  not  good  art,  not  the  best,  and 


TOLSTOI'S  THEORY  OF  ART     159 

therefore  ought  not  to  be  praised.  This  being 
understood,  I  can  better  begin  to  explain  his  doc- 
trine. 

The  first  position  which  he  takes  is  about  as 
follows :  A  great  deal  of  what  has  been  called 
great  art  cannot  be  understood  except  by  edu- 
cated people.  You  must  be  educated  and  re- 
fined in  a  considerable  degree,  in  order  to  under- 
stand the  beauty  of  a  Greek  gem  or  statue,  an 
elaborate  piece  of  music,  or  a  supreme  piece  of 
modern  poetry.  You  must  be  trained  to  under- 
stand the  beauty  of  what  modern  society  calls 
beautiful.  Take  a  peasant  from  the  people,  and 
show  to  him  a  great  painting,  or  repeat  to  him  a 
great  poem,  or  make  him  listen  to  a  grand  piece 
of  harmonized  music;  and  then  ask  him  what-  b^ 
thinks  of  these  things.  As  a  sincere  man,  he  will 
tell  you  that  he  prefers  to  look  at  the  picture  in 
his  village  church,  to  hear  the  songs  of  beggar- 
minstrels,  or  to  listen  to  a  piece  of  dance  music. 
This  Is  unquestionable  fact;  nobody  can  deny  it. 

But  the  substance  of  a  nation  in  any  country, 
the  mass  of  its  humanity,  is  not  cultured,  is  not 
rich,  Is  not  refined;  it  consists  of  peasants  and 
workers,  not  of  fine  ladies  and  gentlemen.  The 
cultivated  class  must  always  be  sm^l;  the  major- 
ity of  a  nation  must  always  remain  workers.  And 
according  to  the  common  acceptation  and  practice 
of  art,   art  is  something  which  only  the  highly 


i6o  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

educated  and  wealthy  can  be  made  to  understand 
and  to  enjoy.  Therefore  art  is  something  with 
which  nine-tenths  at  least,  of  the  human  race,  can 
have  nothing  to  do ! 

Yet  what  of  the  alleged  Inferiority  of  the 
masses?  Are  they  really  inferior  beings,  are  they 
unsusceptible  to  the  highest  and  best  emotions? 
What  are  these  highest  and  best  emotions  that 
artists  talk  so  much  about?  Are  they  not  loy- 
alty, love,  duty,  resignation,  patience,  courage  — 
everything  that  means  the  strength  of  the  race  and 
the  goodness  of  it?  Has  the  peasant  no  loyalty, 
no  love,  no  courage,  no  patience,  no  patriotism? 
Or,  rather  is  it  not  the  peasant  who  is  most  will- 
ing to  give  his  life  for  his  emperor  and  his  coun- 
try, to  sacrifice  himself  for  the  sake  of  others,  to 
do  in  time  of  danger  the  greatest  deeds  of  hero- 
ism, to  sacrifice  himself  In  time  of  peace  for  the 
sake  of  others,  to  obey  under  all  circumstances? 
Is  it  not  the  peasant  really  who  lo ve§  most  ?  Who 
is  the  best  of  husbands  and  fathers?  Who,  in 
all  that  makes  religion  worth  having,  is  the  most 
devout  of  believers?  Tell  the  real  truth,  and 
acknowledge  that  the  peasant  Is  morally  a  better 
man  than  the  average  of  the  noble  and  wealthy. 
He  is  emotionally  better,  and  he  is  better  in  the 
strength  of  his  character.  Where  do  we  find  what 
is  called  human  goodness?  Where  are  we  to  go 
to  look  for  everyday  examples  of  every  virtue? 


TOLSTOI'S  THEORY  OF  ART     i6i 

Is  it  among  the  wealthy  people  of  cities,  or  is  it 
among  the  people  of  the  country,  the  people  who 
cannot  understand  art?  There  is  only  one  an- 
swer to  this  question,  and  it  is  the  same  answer 
that  Ruskin  made  a  long  time  ago.  The  poor  are 
as  a  whole  the  best  people.  If  you  want  to  look 
for  holiness  in  the  sense  of  human  goodness,  you 
must  look  for  it  among  the  poor.  Everything 
noble  in  the  emotional  life  is  there.  The  evil 
devices  and  follies  of  a  few  do  not  signify;  the 
great  mass  of  the  people  are  good. 

Well,  the  great  mass  of  the  people  have  noth- 
ing to  do  with  art,  though  they  are  good.  But 
what  is  art?  It  is  the  power  to  convey  emotion 
by  means  of  words,  music,  colour  or  form;  it  is 
the  means  of  making  people  feel  truth  and  beauty 
through  their  senses.  And  the  common  people 
cannot  understand  art!  Then  must  we  suppose 
that  they  have  no  sense  of  truth  and  beauty? 
Have  we  not  already  been  obliged  to  recognize 
that  the  best  of  human  emotion  belongs  to  them? 
And  if  the  mass  of  the  people  really  possess  every 
noble  emotion,  and  if  our  so-called  art  cannot 
touch  their  hearts  and  their  minds,  where  is  the 
fault?  It  cannot  be  in  the  people;  it  must  be  in 
the  art. 

This  leads  to  another  question  —  is  it  really 
true  that  what  we  have  been  calling  great  art  ap- 
peals to  the  best  emotions  of  mankind?     It  can- 


1 62  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

not  be  true,  Tolstoi  boldly  answers.  If  It  were] 
true,  then  the  people  would  be  touched  by  it. 
They  are  not  touched  by  it;  they  do  not  under- 
stand it;  they  do  not  like  it.  That  is  proof  posi- 
tive that  it  does  not  appeal  to  noble  emotions. 
Then  what  does  it  appeal  to?  At  this  point  of 
the  essay  Tolstoi's  criticism  is  most  telling  and 
most  terrible,  though  weakened  by  occasional  mis- 
takes. What  we  have  been  calling  art,  he  says, 
appeals  to  sensualism  and  lust;  but  the  peasant 
is  chaste.  He  does  not  care  for  pictures  of  naked 
women,  nor  statues  of  nudity  in  any  form;  neither 
does  he  care  for  stories  or  poems  suggesting  sen- 
suality. Sensualism  is  really  weakness;  the  per- 
fectly strong  man  cannot  be  a  sensualist  —  his  life 
is  too  normal  and  too  natural;  if  you  like,  he  is 
too  good  an  animal  to  be  unchaste.  Most  ani- 
mals are  chaste.  But  Western  art,  Greek  art, 
Italian  art,  French  art,  has  been  through  ail  these 
centuries  unchaste,  appealing  only  to  the  sex-in- 
stincts of  the  beholder.  There  are  exceptions,  no 
doubt,  but  in  this  way  of  considering  the  mean- 
ing of  art  we  must  consider  the  dominant  tone. 
I  am  afraid  that  Tolstoi  is  quite  right  about  that. 
I  do  not  think  that  any  one  can  controvert  him. 

Next,  let  us  take  literature.  The  peasant  can- 
not understand  fine  literature;  it  makes  no  appeal 
to  him.  He  has  a  very  simple  literature  of  his 
own,  full  of  beauty  —  touching  songs  and  touch- 


TOLSTOI'S  THEORY  OF  ART     163 

ing  stories  about  human  virtue,  and  our  best  crit- 
ics acknowledge  that  any  poet  can  obtain  the  best 
and  truest  inspiration  from  the  literature  of  de- 
spised peasants.  You  cannot  say  that  the  peas- 
ant Is  Incapable  of  feeling  literary  emotion  —  on 
the  contrary,  he  can  give  it,  he  can  teach  it;  in 
England  he  taught  it  to  every  English  poet  since 
the  time  of  Walter  Scott,  and  to  many  before  that 
time.  The  very  greatest  of  Scotch  singers  was  a 
poor  farmer.  So  we  must  acknowledge  that  a 
peasant  is  no  stranger  to  the  highest  form  of  lit- 
erary emotion.  But  our  fine  literature,  our  liter- 
ature of  educated  men,  cannot  interest  him  at  all. 
Therefore,  the  fault  must  be  In  the  art,  not  in  the 
peasant.  So  let  us  consider  what  is  the  nature  of 
these  noble  emotions  which  our  highest  literary 
art  is  supposed  to  express  and  to  teach. 

Here  again  we  have  Tolstoi's  terrible  criticism. 
Our  greatest  plays  are  plays  on  the  subject  of 
crime,  murder,  lust,  adultery,  treachery,  every- 
thing horrible  In  human  nature.  Our  novels,  for 
the  great  majority,  are  stories  of  social  life  writ- 
ten with  a  view  to  keeping  the  sexual  feelings  of 
the  reader  slightly  excited.  Our  poems  have  been 
for  hundreds  of  years,  a  great  majority  of  them, 
about  sexual  love,  or  about  a  foolish  passion  of 
some  kind.  I  am  only  expressing  Tolstoi's  view 
very  briefly;  It  would  surprise  you  to  discover 
how  he  masses  great  names  together  In  this  con- 


1 64  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

demnatlon,  and  how  very  right  he  seems  to  me  to 
be  in  spite  of  it;  and  then  he  tells  us,  "  You  never 
can  appeal  to  the  honest  mass  of  people,  you 
never  can  touch  their  hearts,  with  stories  of  lust 
and  crime  and  luxury.  They  are  too  good  to 
find  pleasure  in  such  things." 

I  will  not  dwell  upon  his  arraignment  of  mod- 
ern music  and  other  branches  of  art,  because  the 
above  illustrations  are  strong  enough.  His  con- 
clusion is  this:  "  If  art  be  the  means  of  express- 
ing and  conveying  emotion,  then  the  noblest  art 
must  be  that  which  expresses  and  conveys  the 
noblest  form  of  emotion.  Now  the  noblest  emo- 
tions are  emotions  shared  by  all  men;  and  true  art 
should  be  able  to  appeal  to  all  men,  not  to  a  class 
only.  The  proof  that  modern  art  is  not  great 
art,  the  proof  that  it  is  even  bad  art,  is  that  the 
common  people  cannot  understand  it." 

We  now  come  face  to  face  with  two  serious 
objections. 

First,  you  may  say  that  the  reason  common 
people  cannot  understand  great  art  is  simply  this, 
that  they  are  stupid  and  ignorant.  How  can 
they  comprehend  a  great  work  of  literature  when 
they  cannot  understand  the  language  of  litera- 
ture? They  can  read  only  very  simple  things;  to 
read  a  great  poem  or  a  great  work  of  fiction  re- 
quires a  knowledge  of  the  language  of  the  edu- 


TOLSTOI'S  THEORY  OF  ART     165 

cated.     Common  people,  not  being  educated,  of 
course  cannot  understand. 

Very  bravely  does  Tolstoi  face  this  objection. 
He  answers  that  the  so-called  language  of  the  edu- 
cated ought  not  to  be  used  in  a  great  work  of 
art.  A  great  work  ought  to  be  written  in  the 
language  of  the  people,  which  Is  really  the  lan- 
guage of  the  country  and  of  the  nation,  whereas 
the  language  of  the  educated  is  a  special  artificial 
thing,  like  the  language  of  medicine,  the  language 
of  botany,  or  the  language  of  any  special  science. 
And  he  tells  us  that  he  thinks  it  selfish  and  wicked 
and  unreasonable  to  make  literature  Inaccessible 
to  the  people  by  writing  it  in  a  special  idiom  which 
the  people  cannot  understand.  Moreover,  he  says 
that  the  greatest  books  of  the  world  have  never 
been  written  In  a  special  literary  language,  but 
in  the  common  language  of  the  common  people. 
To  illustrate  this  he  quotes  the  great  religious 
books  and  great  religious  poems,  the  Bible  and 
the  books  of  Buddhism  which,  in  the  time  of 
their  composition,  must  have  been  produced  in 
the  living  tongue,  not  in  a  special  language. 
What  reason  can  possibly  be  offered  except  a 
reason  of  prejudice  for  making  literature  incom- 
prehensible to  the  masses?  It  is  no  use  to  say 
that  with  common  language  you  cannot  express 
the  same  ideas  which  you  are  in  the  habit  of  ex- 


1 66  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

pressing  through  literary  language.  If  you  think 
you  cannot  utter  great  thoughts  in  simple  speech, 
that  is  because  of  bad  training,  bad  habits,  false 
education.  The  greatest  thoughts  and  the  deep- 
est ever  uttered,  have  been  written  in  religious 
books  and  in  the  language  of  the  people.  In 
short,  Tolstoi's  position  is  that  the  whole  sys- 
tem of  literary  education  is  wrong  from  top  to 
bottom.  And  this  statement  is  worth  thinking 
about. 

Let  me  give  you  a  quotation,  showing  his  views 
about  the  incomprehensibility  of  art: 

*'  To  say  that  a  work  of  art  is  good,  and  that 
it  is  nevertheless  incomprehensible  to  the  majority 
of  men,  is  just  as  if  one  were  to  say  of  a  certain 
kind  of  food  that  it  is  good,  but  that  the  major- 
ity of  mankind  ought  to  be  careful  not  to  eat  it. 
The  majority  of  men,  doubtless,  may  not  like  to 
eat  rotten  cheese  or  what  is  called  in  England 
*  high  '  game  —  that  is,  the  flesh  of  game  which 
has  been  allowed  to  become  a  little  putrid  —  meat 
much  esteemed  by  men  of  perverted  taste;  but 
bread  and  fruits  are  only  good  when  they  please 
the  taste  of  the  majority  of  mankind.  And  in  the 
case  of  art  it  is  just  the  same  thing.  Perverted 
art  cannot  please  the  majority  of  mankind;  but 
good  art  should  of  necessity  be  something  ca- 
pable of  pleasing  everybody." 

Now  let  me  give  you  an  interesting  quotation 


TOLSTOrS  THEORY  OF  ART     167 

which  illustrates  the  degree  to  which  what  is  now 
called  great  art  seems  unnatural  to  common  peo- 
ple; 

"  Among  people  who  have  not  yet  become  per- 
verted by  the  false  theories  of  our  modern  so- 
ciety, among  artisans  and  among  children,  for  ex- 
ample, nature  has  created  a  very  clear  idea  of 
what  deserves  to  be  blamed  or  to  be  praised. 
According  to  the  instincts  of  the  common  people 
and  of  children,  praise  rightly  belongs  only  to 
great  physical  force  " —  as  in  the  case  of  Her- 
(Cules,  of  heroes,  of  conquerors  — ^"  or  else  to 
moral  force  " —  as  in  the  case  of  Sakya-Muni,  re- 
nouncing beauty  and  power  for  the  sake  of  sav- 
ing man,  or  the  case  of  Christ  dying  upon  the 
Cross  for  our  benefit,  or  as  in  the  case  of  the 
saints  and  the  martyrs.  These  ideas  are  ideas 
of  the  most  perfect  kind.  Simple  and  frankly 
honest  souls  understand  very  well  that  it  is  im- 
possible not  to  respect  physical  force,  because 
^1  )hysical  force  is  a  thing  that  of  itself  compels 
respect;  and  they  also  cannot  help  equally  re- 
specting moral  force  —  the  moral  strength  of  the 
man  who  works  for  the  sake  of  good;  they  feel 
themselves  attracted  toward  the  beauty  of  moral 
force  by  their  whole  inner  nature.  "  These  sim- 
ple minds  perceive  that  there  actually  exist  in  this 
world  men  who  are  more  respected  than  the  men 
respected  for  physical  or  moral  force  —  they  per- 


1 68  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

ceive  that  there  are  men  more  respected,  more 
admired,  and  better  rewarded  than  all  the  heroes 
of  strength  or  of  moral  good,  and  this  merely 
because  they  know  how  to  sing,  how  to  dance, 
or  how  to  write  poems.  A  peasant  can  under- 
stand that  Alexander  the  Great  or  Genghis  Kahn 
or  Napoleon  were  really  great  men;  he  under- 
stands that  because  he  knows  that  any  one  of 
them  would  have  been  able  to  annihilate  him  and 
thousands  of  his  followers.  He  can  also  under- 
stand that  Buddha,  Socrates,  and  Christ  were 
great  men,  because  he  feels  and  knows  that  he 
himself  and  all  other  men  ought  to  try  to  be  like 
them.  But  how  is  it  that  a  man  can  be  called 
great  merely  for  having  written  poems  about  the 
love  of  woman?  That  is  a  thing  which,  by  no 
manner  of  means,  could  he  ever  be  made  to  un- 
derstand." 

Elsewhere  he  gives  a  still  more  amusing  Illus- 
tration. The  common  people,  he  says,  are  accus- 
tomed to  look  at  statues  of  divinities,  angels, 
saints,  gods,  or  heroes.  They  understand  quite 
well  the  reason  for  such  images.  But  when  they 
hear  that  a  statue  has  been  set  up  to  honour  a 
man  like  Baudelaire,  who  wrote  poems  of  lust  or 
despair,  or  when  they  hear  of  a  statue  set  up  ia 
memory  of  a  man  who  knew  how  to  play  the  fid- 
dle, that  appears  to  them  utterly  monstrous.  And 
perhaps  it  is. 


TOLSTOI'S  THEORY  OF  ART     169 

I  have  thought  of  a  second  strong  objection  to 
Tolstoi's  position,  an  objection  which  he  him- 
self has  not  dwelt  on  —  a  philosophical  objec- 
tion. It  is  customary  now-a-days  to  consider  su- 
perior intelligence  as  connected  with  a  superior 
nervous  system.  Many  persons,  I  am  sure,  would 
be  ready  to  say  that  the  common  people  cannot 
understand  high  art,  because  of  the  inferiority 
of  their  nervous  system.  Compared  with  edu- 
cated and  wealthy  people,  they  are  supposed  to 
be  dull,  therefore  incapable  of  feeling  beauty. 
They  live,  in  Europe  at  least,  among  miserable 
conditions  of  dirt  and  bad  smells.  How  could 
they  appreciate  the  delicate  fine  art  of  civiliza- 
tion? I  say  that  many  persons  would  argue  in 
this  way,  but  no  clear  thinker  would  do  so.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  in  modern  Europe  the  best  think- 
ers, the  best  artists,  the  best  scholars,  really  come 
from  the  peasant  class.  Some  farmers  have  been 
able  with  the  greatest  difficulty  to  give  their  chil- 
dren a  better  education  than  the  average.  Even 
in  the  great  English  universities  some  of  the  high- 
est honours  have  been  taken  by  men  of  this  kind, 
proving  as  Spencer  said  long  ago  that  the  foun- 
dation of  a  strong  mind  is  a  strong  body.  I 
know  what  Tolstoi  would  say  about  the  aesthetic 
refinement  of  the  nervous  system.  He  would  sim- 
ply say  that  what  is  called  exquisite  nervous  sen- 
sibility is  nothing  more  than  hyper-aesthesia  — 


I70  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

that  IS,  a  diseased  condition  of  the  nerves.  But 
leaving  this  matter  aside,  let  me  seriously  ask  a 
question.  Is  a  common  peasant  of  the  poorest 
class  really  insensible  to  beauty?  Or  what  kind 
of  beauty  shall  we  take  for  a  test?  The  Euro- 
pean standard  of  art  holds  the  perception  of  hu- 
man beauty  to  be  the  highest  test-mark  of  aesthetic 
ability.  Is  the  common  man,  the  most  common 
and  ignorant  man  of  the  people,  insensible  to 
human  beauty?  Is  he  less  capable,  for  example, 
of  judging  the  beauty  of  woman  than  the  most 
accomplished  of  artists?  Now  I  do  not  know 
what  you  will  think  of  my  statement;  but  I  do 
not  hesitate  for  a  moment  to  say  that  the  best 
judge  of  beauty  in  the  world  is  the  comman  man 
of  the  people.  I  do  not  mean  that  every  man 
of  that  class  is  better  than  others;  but  I  mean 
that  the  quickest  and  best  judges  of  either  a  man 
or  a  woman  are  the  very  same  persons  who  are 
the  quickest  and  best  judges  of  a  horse  or  a  cow. 
For  after  all,  what  we  call  beauty  or  grace  in 
the  best  and  deepest  sense,  represents  physical 
force,  with  which  the  peasant  is  much  better  ac- 
quainted than  we  are.  He  is  accustomed  to  ob- 
serving life,  and  he  does  it  instinctively.  Beauty 
means  a  certain  proportion  in  the  skeleton  which 
gives  the  best  results  of  strength  and  of  easy  mo- 
tion in  the  animal  or  the  man.  Suppose  again 
that  we  consider  the  body  apart  from  beauty; 


TOLSTOI'S  THEORY  OF  ART     171 

what  does  It  mean?  It  means  the  economy  of 
force ;  that  Is,  a  body  should  be  so  made  that  the 
greatest  possible  amount  of  strength  and  activ- 
ity is  obtained  with  the  least  possible  amount  of 
substance.  To  say  that  a  man  accustomed  to 
judge  an  animal  cannot  judge  a  human  being  is 
utter  nonsense.  Such  a  man,  in  fact,  is  the  best 
of  all  judges,  and  seldom  makes  a  mistake.  Now 
history  of  course  has  curious  instances  of  the 
recognition  of  this  fact  by  great  princes.  In  the 
time  of  the  greatest  luxury  of  the  Caliphs  of  Bag- 
dad, when  the  Prince  wished  to  find  a  perfectly 
beautiful  woman  to  be  his  companion,  he  did  not 
invariably  go  to  the  governors  of  provinces  or  to 
the  houses  of  the  nobility  in  search  of  such  a 
woman.  He  went  to  the  wild  Arabs  of  the  des- 
ert, to  the  breeders  of  horses,  and  asked  them  to 
find  the  girl  for  him.  A  memorable  example  is 
that  of  Abdul  Malik,  the  fifth  Caliph  of  the  house 
of  Ommayad;  he  asked  a  common  horse-trader 
how  to  choose  a  beautiful  woman,  and  the  man 
at  once  answered  him,  "  You  must  choose  a 
woman  whose  feet  are  of  such  a  form,  etc." — 
naming  and  describing  every  part  of  the  body  and 
its  best  points  exactly  as  a  horse-trader  would  de- 
scribe the  best  points  of  a  horse.  The  Caliph 
was  astonished  to  discover  that  this  rude  man 
knew  incomparably  more  about  womanly  beauty 
than  all  his  courtiers  and  his  artists.     The  fact 


172  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

is  that  familiarity  with  life,  with  active  life,  gives 
the  best  of  all  knowledge  in  the  matter  of  beauty 
and  strength.  Once  in  America  I  had  a  curious 
illustration  of  what  such  familiarity  can  accom- 
plish in  another  way.  At  a  certain  meeting  of 
men  from  many  parts  of  the  country,  there  came 
into  the  assembly  a  comman  man  of  the  poorest 
class  who  could  tell  the  exact  weight  of  any  one 
in  the  assembly.  You  must  remember  that  every 
man  was  fully  dressed.  All  agreed  to  pay  him 
something  for  proof  of  his  skill,  for  it  is  very 
difficult  to  tell  the  weight  and  strength  of  a  man 
in  Western  clothes.  Well,  the  man  took  a  little 
box,  put  it  on  the  ground,  and  asked  each  person 
present  to  step  over  it.  As  each  person  stepped, 
he  cried  out  the  weight;  and  the  weight  was  al- 
most exactly  as  announced  in  every  case.  After- 
wards I  asked  him  how  he  did  this  extraordinary 
thing.  He  answered,  *'  When  you  lift  your  leg 
to  step  over  the  box,  I  can  see  the  size  and  the 
line  of  the  front  muscle  of  the  thigh,  and  from 
that  I  can  tell  any  man's  weight."  There  is  a 
good  example  of  what  natural  observation  means. 
But  to  return,  in  conclusion,  to  the  subject  of 
this  essay.  I  think  it  will  give  you  something  to 
think  about;  and  certainly  It  confirms  the  truth  of 
one  thing  which  I  have  often  asserted,  that  the 
sooner  Japanese  authors  will  resign  themselves 
to  write  in  the  spoken  language  of  the  people, 


TOLSTOI'S  THEORY  OF  ART     173 

the  better  for  Japanese  literature  and  for  the  gen- 
eral dissemination  of  modern  knowledge.  I  think 
this  book  Is  a  very  great  and  noble  book;  I  also 
think  that  It  Is  fundamentally  true  from  beginning 
to  end.  There  are  mistakes  In  It  —  as,  for  In- 
stance, when  Tolstoi  speaks  of  Kipling  as  an  es- 
sentially obscure  writer,  Incomprehensible  to  the 
people.  But  Kipling  happens  to  be  just  the  man 
who  speaks  to  the  people.  He  uses  their  vernac- 
ular. Such  little  mistakes,  due  to  an  Imperfect 
knowledge  of  a  foreign  people,  do  not  in  the  least 
affect  the  value  of  the  moral  In  this  teaching.  But 
the  reforms  advised  are  at  present,  of  course.  Im- 
possible. Although  I  believe  Tolstoi  Is  perfectly 
right,  I  could  not  lecture  to  you  —  I  could  not 
fulfil  my  duties  In  this  university  —  by  strictly 
observing  his  principles.  Were  I  to  do  that,  I 
should  be  obHged  to  tell  you  that  hundreds  of 
books  famous  in  English  literature  are  essentially 
bad  books,  and  that  you  ought  not  to  read  them 
at  all;  whereas  I  am  engaged  for  the  purpose  of 
pointing  out  to  you  the  literary  merits  of  those 
very  books. 


CHAPTER  VII 

NOTE    UPON   THE   ABUSE   AND   THE    USE    OF 
LITERARY   SOCIETIES 

As  I  have  been  asked,  on  various  occasions,  to 
express  an  opinion  as  to  the  use  of  literary  so- 
cieties, as  well  as  asked  to  join  some  of  them,  I 
have  been  thinking  that  a  short  lecture,  embody- 
ing my  beliefs  upon  the  subject,  might  be  of  use 
to  you.  It  is  not  at  all  necessary  that  you  should 
approve  my  opinions;  but  I  am  sure  that  you  will 
find  them  worth  thinking  about,  because  they  are 
based  upon  something  better  than  any  experience 
of  my  own —  the  experience  and  the  teaching  of 
really  wise  men.  Let  me  begin,  then,  by  saying 
that  I  am  strongly  opposed  to  the  existence  of 
most  literary  societies,  and  that  I  believe  such  so- 
cieties may  do  very  considerable  injury  to  young 
talents. 

There  is  a  general  principle,  especially  insisted 
upon  by  Herbert  Spencer  in  his  Sociology,  which 
applies  to  the  world  of  literature  just  as  much 
as  it  does  to  the  world  of  political  economy, 
or  the  world  of  industrialism.  That  principle  is 
this:  whatever  can  be  done  by  the  individual  in 
the  best  way  possible,  is  not  work  for  a  society 

174 


LITERARY  SOCIETIES  175 

to  attempt,  unless  this  society  can  greatly  improve 
the  work  of  the  individual.     You  know  that  so- 
ciologists are  never  tired  of  pointing  out  that,  even 
in  the  case  of  private  companies  and  state  under- 
takings, the  private  companies  invariably  do  the 
better  work.     Of  course  the  larger  social  ques- 
tions connected  with  competition,  lie  outside  of 
my  province;  I  am  reminding  you  of  them,  but 
I  have  no  wish  to  dwell  upon  them.     Only  re- 
member that  the  general  principle  is  apphcable 
to  all  forms  of  human  work  and  effort.     Co-oper- 
ation  is   valuable   only  when   it  can   accompHsh 
what    is    beyond    the    power    of   the    individual. 
When  it  cannot  accomplish  this,  it  is  much  more 
likely  to  make  mischief  or  to  act  as  a  check  than 
to  do   any  good.     One  reason  for  this  is  very 
simple  —  co-oporation  is  unfavourable  to  personal 
freedom  of  thought  or  action.     If  you  work  with 
a  crowd,  you  must  try  to  obey  the  opinions  of  the 
majority;  you  must  act  in  harmony  with  those 
about  you.     How  very  unfavourable  to  literary 
originality  such  a  condition  would  prove,  we  shall 
presently  have  reason  to  see. 

But  first  let  me  observe  that  ill  kinds  of  liter- 
ary societies  are  not  to  be  indiscriminately  con- 
demned. Some  Hterary  societies  are  very  useful, 
and  have  accomphshed  great  services  to  literature, 
by  doing  for  literature  what  no  individual  could 
possibly  do.     For  example,  in  England  societies 


176  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

have  been  formed  for  the  editing  and  publishing 
of  valuable  old  texts.  The  Early  English  Text 
Society  is  an  example,  one  of  perhaps  a  score. 
No  one  man  could  have  done  the  work  of  this  so- 
ciety, nor  the  work  of  the  Percy  Text  Society,  nor 
the  work  of  a  dozen  others  of  which  you  have 
undoubtedly  heard.  Such  work  requires  a  great 
deal  of  money,  such  as  very  few,  even  rich  men 
could  spare,  and  it  requires  a  vast  amount  of  la- 
bour, beyond  the  capacity  of  any  single  person. 
Now  in  these  cases  hundreds  of  people  contribute 
money  to  support  the  work,  and  dozens  of  schol- 
ars are  thus  enabled  to  concentrate  their  efforts  in 
a  single  direction.  It  would  be  folly  to  say  that 
societies  of  this  kind  are  not  of  the  very  highest 
value.  But  they  are  valuable  only  because  they 
do  what  individual  effort  could  not  do. 

Again,  societies  formed  in  colleges  and  in  uni- 
versities, for  the  purpose  of  encouraging  literary 
effort,  or  debating,  or  any  other  beginnings  in  the 
great  arts  of  composition  or  of  eloquence,  are 
certainly  to  be  recommended.  They  are  to  be 
recommended  because  they  stimulate  the  novice  to 
do  many  things  which  he  might  not  have  self- 
confidence  to  attempt  without  encouragement. 
How  many  a  student  must  have  first  discovered 
his  own  abilities  in  the  direction  of  oratory  or 
poetry  or  fiction,  through  the  stimulus  that  his  col- 
lege society  first  gave  him.     He  thought  that  he 


LITERARY  SOCIETIES  177 

could  not  make  a  speech,  but  one  day,  mucH 
against  his  will,  he  found  that  the  opinion  of  his 
fellow  students  compelled  him  to  make  a  speech, 
and  the  result  was  that  he  proved  to  be  better 
qualified  than  others  to  do  what  he  had  imagined 
impossible.  So  with  the  first  efforts  in  many  di- 
rections. The  majority  forces  us  to  make  them; 
and  in  such  instances  the  influence  of  the  majority 
is  to  develop  individual  power.  But  I  will  still 
say  that  here  the  value  of  such  societies  begins 
and  ends.  There  are  wonderful  societies  of  this 
kind  in  all  the  great  colleges  and  universities  of 
the  world ;  and  they  help  to  develop  the  first  bud- 
ding of  talent,  the  first  literary  and  artistic  ambi- 
tion. But  the  best  of  them  never  produce  any- 
thing great.  They  work  with  raw  material;  the 
very  best  things  published  by  students  of  the  great 
English  universities,  for  example,  are  always  some- 
what immature.  If  we  acknowledge  that  some 
stimulus  of  a  healthy  kind  is  given  to  literary 
ambition  by  this  form  of  co-operation,  then  we 
grant  about  all  that  can  be  granted. 

Once  that  the  individual  mind  blossoms  and  de- 
velops, from  that  moment  the  influence  of  socie- 
ties ceases  to  be  a  benefit,  and  threatens  to  be- 
come an  injury.  The  very  same  social  opinion 
\  .that  compelled  and  encouraged  the  first  effort 
would  almost  certainly  oppose  itself  to  further 
development  after  a  certain  fixed  degree.     The 


lyS  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

early  encouragement  might  be  voiced  in  some  such 
persuasion  as  this:  "Try  to  show  yourself  as 
clever  as  the  rest  of  us."  But  at  a  later  time, 
the  social  opinion  would  certainly  declare,  "  You 
must  not  be  eccentric  and  think  so  differently  from 
the  rest  of  us.  If  you  do  think  that  way,  please 
do  not  express  your  opinions,  for  they  will  not 
be  tolerated."  I  am  putting  the  case  rather 
strongly,  of  course.  But  the  second  form  of  ad- 
dress just  quoted  is  really  that  form  of  address 
which  the  world  uses  to  every  kind  of  original 
talent.  The  world  is  not  nearly  so  liberal,  gen- 
erous, appreciative,  as  the  literary  societies  of  col- 
leges and  of  universities.  Public  opinion  is  above 
all  things  conservative  in  almost  every  direction 
in  which  original  talent  aims.  Instinctively  it 
attempts  to  block  every  departure  from  conven- 
tional ways  of  thought  and  action.  And  any  ma- 
ture society  of  a  certain  average  size  is  pretty  sure 
to  represent  public  opinion  in  a  strong  form.  It 
will  therefore  be  much  more  likely  to  act  as  a 
strangling  power  than  as  a  developing  power.  I 
would  venture  to  say,  however,  that  the  proper 
conditions  of  literary  independence  and  mutual 
encouragement  in  a  literary  society  must  depend 
very  much  upon  the  number  of  its  members.  And 
I  should  put  the  number  very  low  —  so  low  that 
I  think  you  will  be  rather  surprised  at  the  state- 


LITERARY  SOCIETIES  179 

ment.  I  do  not  think  that  a  literary  society  of 
the  sort  to  which  I  have  referred,  should  consist 
at  any  time  of  more  than  two  or  three  persons. 
Combinations  of  three  have  been  proved  both 
possible  and  beneficial.  Any  larger  figure,  even 
four,  I  should  think  dangerous.  And  the  com- 
bination of  three  should  be,  I  think,  a  combina- 
tion of  differences,  not  of  similarities.  The  dur- 
ability of  the  brotherhood  would  depend  upon 
mutual  appreciation,  not  upon  unity  of  idealism 
or  singleness  of  opinion.  But  naturally  this  ques- 
tion comes  up,  ''  Can  we  call  a  fraternity  of  three 
persons  a  Hterary  society?"  Perhaps  not;  yet 
I  firmly  believe  that  any  larger  combination  of  in- 
dividuals for  a  literary  purpose  would  not  accom- 
plish any  good,  and  should  not  be  formed,  except 
for  such  purposes  as  that  of  giving  financial  aid. 
Now  I  shall  try  to  explain  why. 

Experience  among  professional  men  of  letters 
tends  to  show  that  there  is  but  on  way,  one  in- 
fluence, through  which  they  can  reali^  assist  each 
other  toward  the  realization  of  highe'-  things  — 
that  is,  friendship  and  sympathy,  ti'endship, 
real  friendship,  admits  of  perfect  freedom  be- 
tween mind  and  mind,  perfect  frankness,  perfect 
understanding,  and  therefore  complete  sympathy. 
But  the  conditions  of  human  nature  are  such  that, 
even  among  common  minds,  perfect  friendship 


i8o  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

can  seldom  extend  to  any  considerable  number  of 
persons.  So  there  Is  a  Spanish  proverb  on  the 
subject,  which  Is  worth  quoting: 

Compania  de  uno,  compania  nfnguno; 
Compania  de  dos,  compania  de  Dios, 
Compania  de  tres,  compania  es; 
Compania  de  cuatro,  compania  de  Diablo. 

Which  Is  to  say,  one  is  no  company;  two  Is  God's 
company;  three  is  company;  but  four  Is  the  Devil's 
company.  Now  though  It  may  seem  funny,  this 
proverb  Is  really  wise,  as  most  Spanish  proverbs 
are;  for  it  signifies  that  a  perfect  friendship  of 
more  than  three  has  been  found  very  difficult. 
When  four  make  the  company,  a  division  of  opin- 
ion or  feeling  is  almost  certain  to  result;  for  two 
will  be  apt  to  unite  against  one  or  both  of  the 
others,  when  some  vexed  question  arises.  I  be- 
lieve that  you  must  have  known  this  to  be  true 
in  your  own  experience.  At  all  events,  a  literary 
association  made  for  real  and  serious  literary  ob- 
jects of  a  high  class,  can  only  be  beneficial  and 
enduring  if  built  upon  friendship  and  sympathy; 
and  friendship  and  sympathy  of  the  quality  needed 
cannot  be  expected  from  a  combination  of  more 
than  three. 

Perhaps  you  will  think  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
brotherhood,  and  other  societies.  But  now  that 
we  have  full  details  about  these  societies,  we  find 


LITERARY  SOCIETIES  i8i 

that  they  were  societies  in  name  rather  than  in 
fact.  The  Pre-Raphaelite  society  existed  only 
by  groups  of  three,  and  these  groups  touched  each 
other  only  at  long  intervals.  Moreover,  the  only 
thing  that  kept  the  three  affiliated  even  by  the 
thinnest  of  threads,  was  a  certain  business  neces- 
sity. I  believe  you  will  find  in  the  history  of  Eng- 
lish literature  that  nearly  all  great  men  have  been 
solitary  workers,  and  have  had  remarkably  few 
friends.  Certainly  this  has  been  the  case  in  mod- 
ern times.  I  cannot  think  of  any  way  in  which 
a  literary  combination  could  be  of  serious  value 
to  a  serious  literary  worker,  except  in  the  manner 
that  I  have  indicated. 

You  will  perhaps  remember  that  in  England 
and  in  America  there  are  thousands  of  ''  literary 
societies,"  that  almost  every  country  town  has  a 
literary  society  of  some  kind;  indeed,  I  might  re- 
mark that  even  in  Yokohama  and  in  Kobe  the 
foreign  merchants  have  made  a  '*  literary  so- 
ciety." But  it  does  not  at  all  follow  that  these 
societies  are  literary  because  they  are  called  Hter- 
ary.  Do  not  be  deceived  by  this  fact  of  the  popu- 
larity of  literary  societies  in  England  and  else- 
where. Such  societies  are  formed  for  purposes 
of  which  the  average  student  has  no  idea.  They 
are  formed  for  purely  social  purposes,  to  bring 
young  men  and  women  together,  to  enable  parents 
to  marry  their  daughters,  to  enable  small  musi- 


1 82  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

cians  or  small  poets  or  popular  journalists  to  ob- 
tain a  little  social  influence.  I  do  not  care  how 
big  the  society  may  be,  that  is  the  real  end  of  it. 
There  is  a  little  music,  a  little  speaking,  a  common- 
place essay.  Then  there  is  a  great  deal  of  in- 
troduction and  of  social  gossip.  This  Is  only  a 
commonplace  and  vulgar  playing  with  the  subject 
of  literature;  it  Is  worse  than  playing  —  It  Is  pre- 
tending. And  I  am  speaking  to  superior  men, 
to  educated  men.  As  a  university  man  must  take 
literature  seriously,  he  cannot  be  Interested  In 
nonsense  of  the  sort  which  I  have  been  describing, 
and  only  as  nonsense  can  the  thing  exist  for  him. 
You  do  not  find  real  men  of  letters  bothering 
themselves  with  societies  of  that  kind. 

Now,  to  sum  up,  I  will  say  that  literary  socie- 
ties of  a  serious  character,  such  as  those  formed 
in  universities,  and  sometimes  outside  of  them, 
have  this  value  —  they  will  help  men  to  rise  up  to 
the  general  level.  Now  "  the  general  level " 
means  mediocrity;  It  cannot  mean  anything  else. 
But  young  students  of  either  sex,  or  young  per- 
sons of  sentiment,  must  begin  by  rising  to  medio- 
crity; they  must  grow.  Therefore  I  say  that  such 
societies  give  valuable  encouragement  to  young 
people.  But  though  the  societies  help  you  to  rise 
to  the  general  level,  they  will  never  help  you  to 
rise  above  it.  And  therefore  I  think  that  the 
man  who  has  reached  his  full  intellectual  strength 


LITERARY  SOCIETIES  183 

can  derive  no  benefit  from  them.  Literature,  in 
the  true  sense,  is  not  what  remains  at  the  general 
level;  it  is  the  exceptional,  the  extraordinary,  the 
powerful,  the  unexpected,  that  soars  far  above  the 
general  level.  And  therefore  I  think  that  a  uni- 
versity graduate  intending  to  make  literature  his 
profession,  should  no  more  hamper  himself  by 
belonging  to  literary  societies,  than  a  man  intend- 
ing to  climb  a  mountain  should  begin  by  tying  a 
very  large  stone  to  the  ankle  of  each  foot. 

And  yet,  in  spite  of  what  I  have  said  against 
the  serious  value  of  literary  societies,  I  must  con- 
fess I  myself  belong  to  a  literary  society.  But 
it  is  really  the  most  sensible  society  of  the  kind 
imaginable.  There  are  no  meetings  which  one  is 
obliged  to  attend;  there  Is  no  demand  for  liter- 
ary work  of  any  sort;  you  are  not  even  obliged 
to  know  the  other  members  of  the  society.  We 
make  every  year  a  contribution  of  money;  but  we 
must  contribute  for  twenty  years  and  never  get 
anything  in  return.  Then  you  might  ask,  what 
is  the  use  of  such  a  society?  It  Is  very  useful 
indeed.  Thousands  of  writers  belong  to  It,  but 
very  few  of  them  use  it.  The  object  of  the  so- 
ciety is  to  provide  money  for  the  employment  of 
good  lawyers  to  defend  the  interests  of  authors 
against  dishonourable  publishers.  Authors  are 
generally  very  poor  men,  and  very  easy  to  take 
advantage  of  in  business.     Tq  go  to  law  with  a 


1 84  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

publisher  is  out  of  the  power  of  a  poor  man,  in 
nine  cases  out  of  ten.  But  if  a  thousand  poor 
men  get  together,  each  to  contribute  every  year 
a  small  sum  in  the  interests  of  right  and  justice, 
without  asking  any  direct  return  for  it,  then  a 
great  deal  may  be  done.  As  it  is,  the  society 
employs  very  skilful  lawyers  and  advisors.  If 
any  one  member  of  the  society  be  unjustly  treated, 
all  the  others  thus  combine  to  defend  him.  Now 
that  is  an  illustration  of  what  a  society  really 
should  be  formed  for  —  only  to  do  for  each  of 
its  members  what  the  individuals  cannot  possibly 
do  for  themselves.  Otherwise  there  is  absolute 
independence.  No  man  is  obliged  to  give  his 
time  or  his  work  to  the  society  at  home;  there  is 
no  literary  labour  attempted;  all  the  legal  work 
is  done  by  persons  hired  by  the  society.  I  think 
that  a  society  of  that  kind  formed  with  the  gen- 
eral object  of  protecting  the  interests  of  Japa- 
nese authors,  and  therefore  of  protecting  the 
growth  of  future  Japanese  literature,  would  be  of 
great  service.  But  otherwise  I  can  imagine  no 
value  to  university  graduates  in  a  literary  society 
of  any  sort,  containing  more  than  three  members. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

ON   READING 

I  wish  to  keep  my  promise  regarding  a  series  of 
lectures  relating  to  literary  life  and  work,  to  be 
'  given  independently  of  texts  or  authorities,  and 
^  to  represent,  as  far  as  possible,  the  results  of 
practical  experience  among  the  makers  of  litera- 
ture in  different  countries.  The  subject  will  be 
Reading  —  apparently,  perhaps,  a  very  simple 
subject,  but  really  not  so  simple  as  it  looks,  and 
much  more  important  than  you  may  think  it.  I 
shall  begin  this  lecture  by  saying  that  very  few 
persons  know  how  to  read.  Considerable  expe- 
rience with  literature  is  needed  before  taste  and 
discrimination  can  possibly  be  acquired;  and  with- 
out these,  it  is  almost  impossible  to  learn  how  to 
read.  I  say  almost  impossible;  since  there  are 
some  rare  men  who,  through  a  natural  inborn 
taste,  through  a  kind  of  inherited  literary  instinct, 
are  able  to  read  very  .well  even  before  reaching 
the  age  of  twenty-five  years.  But  these  are  great 
exceptions,  and  I  am  speaking  of  the  average. 

For,  to  read  the  characters  or  the  letters  of  the 
text  does  not  mean  reading  in  the  true  sense. 
You  will  often  find  yourselves  reading  words  or 

185 


1 86  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

characters  automatically,  even  pronouncing  them 
quite  correctly,  while  your  minds  are  occupied  with 
a  totally  different  subject.  This  mere  mechanism 
of  reading  becomes  altogether  automatic  at  an 
early  period  of  life,  and  can  be  performed  irre- 
spective of  attention.  Neither  can  I  call  it  read- 
ing to  extract  the  narrative  portion  of  a  text  from 
the  rest  simply  for  one's  personal  amusement,  or, 
in  other  words,  to  read  a  book  "  for  the  story." 
Yet  most  of  the  reading  that  is  done  in  the  world 
is  done  in  exactly  this  way.  Thousands  and  thou- 
sands of  books  are  bought  every  year,  every 
month,  I  might  even  say  every  day,  by  people  who 
do  not  read  at  all.  They  only  think  that  they  read. 
They  buy  books  just  to  amuse  themselves,  "  to 
kill  time,"  as  they  call  it;  in  one  hour  or  two  their 
eyes  have  passed  over  all  the  pages,  and  there  is 
left  in  their  minds  a  vague  Idea  or  two  about  what 
they  have  been  looking  at;  and  this  they  really 
believe  Is  reading.  Nothing  Is  more  common 
than  to  be  asked,  "  Have  you  read  such  a  book?  " 
or  to  hear  somebody  say,  "  I  have  read  such  and 
such  a  book."  But  these  persons  do  not  speak 
seriously.  Out  of  a  thousand  persons  who  say, 
**  I  have  read  this,"  or  "  I  have  read  that,"  there 
Is  not  one  perhaps  who  Is  able  to  express  any 
opinion  worth  hearing  about  what  he  has  been 
reading.  Many  and  many  a  time  I  hear  students 
say  that  they  have  read  certain  books;  but  if  I 


ON  READING  187 

ask  them  some  questions  regarding  the  book,  I  find 
that  they  are  not  able  to  make  any  answer,  or  at 
best,  they  will  only  repeat  something  that  some- 
body else  has  said  about  what  they  think  that 
they  have  been  reading.  But  this  is  not  peculiar 
to  students;  it  is  in  all  countries  the  way  that  the 
great  public  devour  books.  And  to  conclude  this- 
introductory  part  of  the  lecture,  I  would  say  that 
the  difference  between  the  great  critic  and  the 
common  person  Is  chiefly  that  the  great  critic 
knows  how  to  read,  and  that  the  common  person 
does  not.  No  man  is  really  able  to  read  a  book 
who  is  not  able  to  express  an  original  opinion  re- 

^    garding  the  contents  of  a  book. 

?  No  doubt  you  will  think  that  this  statement  of 
the  case  confuses  reading  with  study.     You  might 

I  say,  "  When  we  read  history  or  philosophy  or  sci- 
ence, then  we  do  read  very  thoroughly,  studying 
all  the  meanings  and  bearings  of  the  text,  slowly, 
and  thinking  about  it.  This  Is  hard  study.  But 
when  we  read  a  story  or  a  poem  out  of  class-hours, 
we  read  for  amusement.  Amusement  and  study 
are  two  different  things."  I  am  not  sure  that 
you  all  think  this ;  but  young  men  generally  do  so 
think.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  every  book  worth 
reading  ought  to  be  read  In  precisely  the  same  way 
that  a  scientific  book  Is  read  —  not  simply  for 
amusement;  and  every  book  worth  reading  should 
have  the  same  amount  of  value  in  it  that  a  scl- 


1 88  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

entific  book  has,  though  the  value  may  be  of  j£ 
totally  different  kind.  For,  after  all,  the  good 
book  of  fiction  or  romance  or  poetry  is  a  scientific 
work;  it  has  been  composed  according  to  the  best 
principles  of  more  than  one  science,  but  especially 
according  to  the  principles  of  the  great  science  of 
life,  the  knowledge  of  human  nature. 

In  regard  to  foreign  books,  this  is  especially 
true;  but  the  advice  suggested  will  be  harder  to 
follow,  when  we  read  in  a  language  which  is  not 
our  own.  Nevertheless,  how  many  Englishmen 
do  you  suppose  really  read  a  good  book  in  Eng- 
lish? how  many  Frenchmen  read  a  great  book 
in  their  own  tongue?  Probably  not  more  than 
one  in  two  thousand  of  those  who  think  that  they 
read.  What  is  more,  although  there  are  now 
published  every  year  in  London  upwards  of  six 
thousand  books,  at  no  time  has  there  been  so  lit- 
tle good  reading  done  by  the  average  public  as 
today.  Books  are  written,  sold,  and  read  after 
a  fashion  —  or  rather  according  to  the  fashion. 
There  is  a  fashion  in  literature  as  well  as  in  every- 
thing else;  and  a  particular  kind  of  amusement 
being  desired  by  the  public,  a  particular  kind  of 
reading  is  given  to  supply  the  demand.  So  use- 
less have  become  to  this  public  the  arts  and  graces 
of  real  literature,  the  great  thoughts  which  should 
belong  to  a  great  book,  that  men  of  letters  have 
almost  ceased  to  produce  true  literature.     When 


ON  READING  189 

a  man  can  obtain  a  great  deal  of  money  by  writ- 
ing a  book  without  style  or  beauty,  a  mere  narra- 
tive to  amuse,  and  knows  at  the  same  time  that  if 
he  should  give  three,  five^  or  ten  years  to  the  pro- 
duction of  a  really  good  book,  he  would  prob- 
ably starve  to  death,  he  is  forced  to  be  untrue  to 
the  higher  duties  of  his  profession.  Men  happily 
situated  in  regard  to  money  matters,  might  pos- 
sibly attempt  something  great  from  time  to  time ; 
but  they  can  hardly  get  a  hearing.  Taste  is  so 
Inuch  deteriorated  within  the  past  few  years,  that, 
as  I  told  you  before,  style  has  practically  disap- 
peared —  and  style  means  thinking.  And  this 
state  of  things  in  England  has  been  largely 
brought  about  by  bad  habits  of  reading,  by  not 
knowing  how  to  read. 

For  the  first  thing  which  a  scholar  should  bear 
in  mind  is  that  a  book  ought  not  to  be  read  for 
mere  amusement.  Half-educated  persons  read 
for  amusement,  and  are  not  to  be  blamed  for  it; 
they  are  incapable  of  appreciating  the  deeper 
qualities  that  belong  to  a  really  great  literature. 
But  a  young  man  who  has  passed  through  a  course 
of  university  training  should  discipline  himself  at 
an  early  day  never  to  read  for  mere  amusement. 
And  once  the  habit  of  the  discipline  has  been 
formed,  he  will  even  find  it  impossible  to  read 
for  mere  amusement.  He  will  then  Impatiently 
throw  down  any  book  from  which  he  cannot  ob- 


190  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

tain  intellectual  food,  any  book  which  does  not 
make  an  appeal  to  the  higher  emotions  and  to  his 
intellect.  But  on  the  other  hand,  the  habit  of 
reading  for  amusement  becomes  with  thousands 
of  people  exactly  the  same  kind  of  habit  as  wlne- 
drinklng  or  opium-smoking;  it  Is  like  a  narcotic, 
something  that  helps  to  pass  the  time,  something 
that  keeps  up  a  perpetual  condition  of  dreaming, 
something  that  eventually  results  in  destroying 
all  capacity  for  thought,  giving  exercise  only  to 
the  surface  parts  of  the  mind,  and  leaving  the 
deeper  springs  of  feeling  and  the  higher  faculties 
of  perception  unemployed. 

Let  us  simply  state  what  the  facts  are  about 
this  kind  of  reading.  A  young  clerk,  for  exam- 
ple, reads  every  day  on  the  way  to  his  office  and 
on  the  way  back,  just  to  pass  the  time;  and  what 
does  he  read?  A  novel,  of  course;  it  is  very 
easy  work,  and  it  enables  him  to  forget  his  trou- 
bles for  a  moment,  to  dull  his  mind  to  all  the 
the  little  worries  of  his  dally  routine.  In  one  or 
two  days  he  finishes  the  novel;  then  he  gets  an- 
other. He  reads  quickly  in  these  days.  By  the 
end  of  the  year  he  has  read  between  a  hundred  and 
fifty  and  two  hundred  novels;  no  matter  how 
poor  he  is,  this  luxury  Is  possible  to  him,  because 
of  the  Institution  of  circulating  libraries.  At  the 
end  of  a  few  years  he  has  read  several  thousand 
novels.     Does  he  like  them?     No;  he  will  tell 


ON  READING  191 

you  that  they  are  nearly  all  the  same,  but  they 
help  him  to  pass  away  his  idle  time;  they  have 
become  a  necessity  for  him;  he  would  be  very 
unhappy  if  he  could  not  continue  this  sort  of  read- 
ing. It  is  utterly  impossible  that  the  result  can 
be  anything  but  a  stupefying  of  the  faculties.  He 
cannot  even  remember  the  names  of  twenty  or 
thirty  books  out  of  thousands;  much  less  does  he 
remember  what  they  contain.  The  result  of  all 
this  reading  means  nothing  but  a  cloudiness  in 
his  mind.  That  is  the  direct  result.  The  indi- 
rect result  is  that  the  mind  has  been  kept  from 
developing  itself.  All  development  necessarily 
means  some  pain;  and  such  reading  as  I  speak 
of  has  been  employed  unconsciously  as  a  means 
to  avoid  that  pain,  and  the  consequence  is  atrophy. 

Of  course  this  is  an  extreme  case;  but  it  is  the 
ultimate  outcome  of  reading  for  amusement  when- 
ever such  amusement  becomes  a  habit,  and  when 
there  are  means  close  at  hand  to  gratify  the 
habit.  At  present  in  Japan  there  is  little  danger 
of  this  state  of  things;  but  I  use  the  illustration 
for  the  sake  of  its  ethical  warning. 

This  does  not  mean  that  there  is  any  sort  of 
good  literature  which  should  be  shunned.  A 
good  novel  is  just  as  good  reading  as  even  the 
greatest  philosopher  can  possibly  wish  for.  (>The 
whole  matter  depends  upon  the  way  of  reading, 
even  more  than  upon  the  nature  of  what  is  read,  j 


192  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

Perhaps  it  is  too  much  to  say,  as  has  often  been 
said,  that  there  is  no  book  which  has  nothing 
good  in  it;  it  is  better  simply  to  state  that  the 
good  of  a  book  depends  incomparably  more  for 
its  influence  upon  the  habits  of  the  reader  than 
upon  the  art  of  the  .writer,  no  matter  how  great 
that  writer  may  be. 

In  a  previous  lecture  I  tried  to  call  your  atten- 
tion to  the  superiority  of  the  child's  methods  of 
observation  to  those  of  the  man;  and  the  same 
fact  may  be  noticed  in  regard  to  the  child's 
method  of  reading.  Certainly  the  child  can  read 
only  very  simple  things;  but  he  reads  most  thor- 
oughly; and  he  thinks  and  thinks  and  thinks  un- 
tiringly about  what  he  reads;  one  little  fairy  tale 
will  give  him  mental  occupation  for  a  month 
after  he  has  read  it.  All  the  energies  of  his  lit- 
tle fancy  are  exhausted  upon  the  tale;  and  if  his 
parents  be  wise,  they  do  not  allow  him  to  read  a 
second  tale,  until  the  pleasure  of  the  first,  and  its 
imaginative  effect,  has  begun  to  die  away.  Later 
habits,  habits  which  I  shall  venture  to  call  bad, 
soon  destroy  the  child's  power  of  really  attentive 
reading.  But  let  us  now  take  the  case  of  a  pro- 
fessional reader,  a  scientific  reader;  and  we  shall 
observe  the  same  power,  developed  of  course  to 
an  enormous  degree.  In  the  ofHce  of  a  great 
publishing  house  which  I  used  to  visit,  there  are 
received  every  year  sixteen  thousand  manuscripts. 


ON  READING  193 

All  these  must  be  looked  at  and  judged;  and  such 
work  in  all  publlshln£  offices  Is  performed  by  what 
is  called  professional  readers.  The  professional 
reader  must  be  a  scholar,  and  a  man  of  very  un- 
common capacity.  Out  of  a  thousand  manu- 
scripts he  will  read  perhaps  not  more  than  one; 
out  of  two  thousand  he  may  possibly  read  three. 
The  others  he  simply  looks  at  for  a  few  seconds 
—  one  glance  is  enough  for  him  to  decide  whether 
the  manuscript  is  worth  reading  or  not.  The 
shape  of  a  single  sentence  will  tell  him  that,  from 
the  literary  point  of  view.  As  regards  subject, 
even  the  title  is  enough  for  him  to  judge,  in  a 
large  number  of  cases.  Some  manuscripts  may 
receive  a  minute  or  even  five  minutes  of  his  at- 
tention; very  few  receive  a  longer  consideration. 
Out  of  sixteen  thousand,  we  may  suppose  that  six- 
teen are  finally  selected  for  judgment.  He  reads 
these  from  beginning  to  end.  Having  read  them, 
he  decides  that  only  eight  can  be  further  consid- 
ered. The  eight  are  read  a  second  time,  much 
more  carefully.  At  the  close  of  the  second  ex- 
amination the  number  is  perhaps  reduced  to 
seven.  These  seven  are  destined  for  a  third 
reading;  but  the  professional  reader  knows  bet- 
ter than  to  read  them  immediately.  He  leaves 
them  locked  up  in  a  drawer,  and  passes  a  whole 
week  without  looking  at  them.  At  the  end  of 
the  week  he  tries  to  see  whether  he  can  remem- 


194  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

ber  distinctly  each  of  these  seven  manuscripts 
and  their  qualities.  Very  distinctly  he  remem- 
bers three;  the  remaining  four  he  can  not  at  once 
recall.  With  a  little  more  effort,  he  Is  able  to 
remember  two  more.  But  two  he  has  utterly  for- 
gotten. This  is  a  fatal  defect;  the  work  that 
leaves  no  impression  upon  the  mind  after  two 
readings  can  not  have  real  value.  He  then  takes 
the  manuscripts  out  of  the  drawer,  condemns  two 
—  the  two  he  could  not  remember  —  and  re-reads 
the  five.  At  the  third  reading  everything  is 
judged  —  subject,  execution,  thought,  literary 
quality.  Three  are  discovered  to  be  first  class; 
two  are  accepted  by  the  publishers  only  as  second 
class.     And  so  the  matter  ends. 

Something  like  this  goes  on  in  all  great  pub- 
lishing houses;  but  unfortunately  not  all  literary 
work  is  now  judged  in  the  same  severe  way.  It 
is  now  judged  rather  by  what  the  public  likes;  and 
the  public  does  not  like  the  best.  But  you  may 
be  sure  that  in  a  house  such  as  that  of  the  Cam- 
bridge or  the  Oxford  University  publishers,  the 
test  of  a  manuscript  is  very  severe  indeed;  it  is 
there  read  much  more  thoroughly  than  it  is  likely 
ever  to  be  read  again.  Now  this  professional 
reader  whom  we  speak  of,  with  all  his  knowledge 
and  scholarship  and  experience,  reads  the  book 
very  much  in  the  same  way  as  the  child  reads  a 
fairy-tale.     He  has  forced  his  mind  to  exert  all 


ON  READING  195 

its  powers  in  the  same  minute  way  that  the  child's 
mind  does,  to  think  about  everything  in  the  book, 
in  all  its  bearings,  in  a  hundred  different  direc- 
tions. It  is  not  true  that  a  child  is  a  bad  reader; 
the  habit  of  bad  reading  is  only  formed  much 
later  in  life,  and  is  always  unnatural.  The  nat- 
ural and  also  the  scholarly  way  of  reading  is  the 
child's  way.  But  it  requires  what  we  are  apt  to 
lose  as  we  grow  up,  the  golden  gift  of  patience; 
and  without  patience  nothing,  not  even  reading, 
can  be  well  done. 

Important  then  as  careful  reading  is,  you  can 
readily  perceive  that  it  should  not  be  wasted. 
The  powers  of  a  well-trained  and  highly  edu- 
cated mind  ought  not  to  be  expended  upon  any 
common  book.  By  common  I  mean  cheap  and 
useless  literature.  Nothing  is  so  essential  to  self- 
training  as  the  proper  choice  of  books  to  read; 
and  nothing  is  so  universally  neglected.  It  is  not 
even  right  that  a  person  of  abihty  should  waste 
his  time  in  "  finding  out  "  what  to  read.  He  can 
easily  obtain  a  very  correct  idea  of  the  limits  of 
the  best  in  all  departments  of  literature,  and  keep 
to  that  best.  Of  course,  if  he  has  to  become  a 
specialist,  a  critic,  a  professional  reader,  he  will 
have  to  read  what  is  bad  as  well  as  what  is  good, 
and  will  be  able  to  save  himself  from  much  tor- 
ment only  by  an  exceedingly  rapid  exercise  of 
judgment,  formed  by  experience.     Imagine,  for 


196  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

example,  the  reading  that  must  have  been  done, 
and  thoroughly  done,  by  such  a  critic  as  Pro- 
fessor Saintsbury.  Leaving  out  of  the  question 
all  his  university  training,  and  his  mastery  of 
Greek  and  Latin  classics,  which  is  no  small  read- 
ing to  begin  with,  he  must  have  read  some  five 
thousand  books  in  the  English  of  all  centuries, — 
learned  thoroughly  everything  that  was  in  them, 
the  history  of  each  one,  and  the  history  of  its 
author,  whenever  that  was  accessible.  He  must 
also  have  mastered  thoroughly  the  social  and 
political  history  relating  to  all  this  mass  of  litera- 
ture. But  this  is  still  less  than  half  his  work. 
For  being  an  authority  upon  two  literatures,  his 
study  of  French,  both  old  and  new  French,  must 
have  been  even  more  extensive  than  his  study  of 
English.  And  all  his  work  had  to  be  read  as  a 
master  reads;  there  was  little  mere  amusement 
in  the  whole  from  beginning  to  end.  The  only 
pleasure  could  be  in  results;  but  these  results  are 
very  great.  Nothing  is  more  difficult  in  this 
world  than  to  read  a  book  and  then  to  express 
clearly  and  truly  in  a  few  lines  exactly  what  the 
literary  value  of  the  book  is.  There  are  not 
more  than  twenty  people  in  the  world  that  can  do 
this,  for  the  experience  as  well  as  the  capacity  re- 
quired must  be  enormous.  Very  few  of  us  can 
hope  to  become  even  third  or  fourth  class  critics 
after  even  a  lifetime  of  study.     But  we  can  all 


ON  READING  197 

learn  to  read;  and  that  is  not  by  any  means  a 
small  feat.  The  great  critics  can  best  show  us 
the  way  to  do  this,  by  their  judgment. 

Yet  after  all,  the  greatest  of  critics  is  the  pub- 
lic —  not  the  public  for  a  day  or  a  generation,  but 
the  public  of  centuries,  the  consensus  of  national 
opinion  or  of  human  opinion  about  a  book  that 
has  been  subjected  to  the  awful  test  of  time. 
Reputations  are  made  not  by  critics,  but  by  the  ac- 
cumulation of  human  opinion  through  hundreds 
of  years.  And  human  opinion  is  not  sharply  de- 
fined like  the  opinion  of  a  trained  critic;  it  cannot 
explain;  it  is  vague,  like  a  great  emotion  of  which 
we  cannot  exactly  describe  the  nature;  it  is  based 
upon  feeling  rather  than  upon  thinking;  it  only 
says,  ^*  we  like  this."  Yet  there  is  no  judgment 
so  sure  as  this  kind  of  judgment,  for  it  is  the  out- 
come of  an  enormous  experience.  The  test  of  a 
good  book  ought  always  to  be  the  test  which  hu- 
man opinion,  working  for  generations,  applies. 
And  this  is  very  simple. 

The  test  of  a  great  book  is  whether  we  want 
to  read  it  only  once  or  more  than  once.  Any 
really  great  book  we  want  to  read  the  second 
time  even  more  than  we  wanted  to  read  it  the  first 
time;  and  every  additional  time  that  we  read  it  we 
find  new  meanings  and  new  beauties  in  it.  A 
book  that  a  person  of  education  and  good  taste 
does  not  care  to  read  more  than  once  is  very  prob- 


198  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

ably  not  worth  much.  Some  time  ago  there  was  a 
very  clever  discussion  going  on  regarding  the  art 
of  the  great  French  novelist,  Zola;  some  people 
claimed  that  he  possessed  absolute  genius;  others 
claimed  that  he  had  only  talent  of  a  very  remark- 
able kind.  The  battle  of  argument  brought  out 
some  strange  extravagances  of  opinion.  But 
suddenly  a  very  great  critic  simply  put  this  ques- 
tion: *'  How  many  of  you  have  read,  or  would 
care  to  read,  one  of  Zola's  books  a  second  time?  " 
There  was  no  answer;  the  fact  was  settled. 
Probably  no  one  would  read  a  book  by  Zola  more 
than  once;  and  this  Is  proof  positive  that  there  is 
no  great  genius  in  them,  and  no  great  mastery  of 
the  highest  form  of  feehng.  Shallow  or  false 
any  book  must  be,  that,  although  bought  by  a 
hundred  thousand  readers,  is  never  read  more 
than  once.  But  we  can  not  consider  the  judg- 
ment of  a  single  individual  Infallible.  The  opin- 
ion that  makes  a  book  great  must  be  the  opinion 
of  many.  For  even  the  greatest  critics  are  apt  to 
have  certain  dulnesses,  certain  Inappreciatlons. 
Carlyle,  for  example,  could  not  endure  Browning; 
Byron  could  not  endure  some  of  the  greatest  of 
English  poets.  A  man  must  be  many-sided  to 
uuer  a  trustworthy  estimate  of  many  books.  We 
may  doubt  the  judgment  of  the  single  critic  at 
times.  But  there  Is  no  doubt  possible  In  regard 
to  the  judgment  of  generations.     Even  If  we  can- 


ON  READING  199 

not  at  once  perceive  anything  good  in  a  book 
which  has  been  admired  and  praised  for  hundreds 
of  years,  we  may  be  sure  that  by  trying,  by  study- 
ing it  carefully,  we  shall  at  last  be  able  to  feel  the 
reason  of  this  admiration  and  praise.  The  best 
of  all  libraries  for  a  poor  man  would  be  a  library 
entirely  composed  of  such  great  works  only,  books 
which  have  passed  the  test  of  time. 

This  then  would  be  the  most  important  guide 
for  us  In  the  choice  of  reading.  We  should  read 
only  the  books  that  we  want  to  read  more  than 
once,  nor  should  we  buy  any  others,  unless  we 
have  some  special  reason  for  so  investing  money. 
The  second  fact  demanding  attention  is  the  gen- 
eral character  of  the  value  that  lies  hidden  within 
all  such  great  books.  They  never  become  old: 
their  youth  Is  immortal.  A  great  book  is  not  apt 
to  be  comprehended  by  a  young  person  at  the 
first  reading  except  In  a  superficial  way.  Only 
the  surface,  the  narrative,  is  absorbed  and  en- 
joyed. No  young  man  can  possibly  see  at  first 
reading  the  qualities  of  a  great  book.  Remem- 
ber that  it  has  taken  humanity  In  many  cases  hun- 
dreds of  years  to  find  out  all  that  there  Is  In  such 
a  book.  But  according  to  a  man's  experience  of 
life,  the  text  will  unfold  new  meanings  to  him. 
The  book  that  delighted  us  at  eighteen.  If  it  be  a 
good  book,  will  delight  us  much  more  at  twenty- 
five,  and  it  will  prove  like  a  new  book  to  us  at 


200  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

thirty  years  of  age.  At  forty  we  shall  re-read  it, 
wondering  why  we  never  saw  how  beautiful  it  was 
before.  At  fifty  or  sixty  years  of  age  the  same 
facts  will  repeat  themselves.  A  great  book 
grows  exactly  in  proportion  to  the  growth  of  the 
reader's  mind.  It  was  the  discovery  of  this  ex- 
traordinary fact  by  generations  of  people  long 
dead  that  made  the  greatness  of  such  works  as 
those  of  Shakespeare,  of  Dante,  or  of  Goethe. 
Perhaps  Goethe  can  give  us  at  this  moment  the 
best  illustration.  He  wrote  a  number  of  little 
stories  in  prose,  which  children  like,  because  to 
children  they  have  all  the  charm  of  fairy-tales. 
But  he  never  intended  them  for  fairy-tales;  he 
wrote  them  for  experienced  minds.  A  young  man 
ifinds  very  serious  reading  in  them;  a  middle  aged 
man  discovers  an  extraordinary  depth  in  their 
least  utterance;  and  an  old  man  will  find  in  them 
all  the  world's  philosophy,  all  the  wisdom  of  life. 
If  one  is  very  dull,  he  may  not  see  much  in  them, 
but  just  in  proportion  as  he  is  a  superior  man, 
and  in  proportion  as  his  knowledge  of  life  has 
been  extensive,  so  will  he  discover  the  greatness 
of  the  mind  that  conceived  them. 

This  does  not  mean  that  the  authors  of  such 
books  could  have  preconceived  the  entire  range 
and  depth  of  that  which  they  put  into  their  work. 
Great  art  works  unconsciously  without  ever  sus- 
pecting that  it  is  great;  and  the  larger  the  genius 


ON  READING  201 

of  a  writer,  the  less  chance  there  is  of  his  ever 
knowing  that  he  has  genius;  for  his  power  is  less 
likely  to  be  discovered  by  the  public  until  long 
after  he  is  dead.  The  great  things  done  in  lit- 
erature have  not  usually  been  done  by  men  who 
thought  themselves  great.  Many  thousand  years 
ago  some  wanderer  in  Arabia,  looking  at  the  stars 
of  the  night,  and  thinking  about  the  relation  of 
man  to  the  unseen  powers  that  shaped  the  world, 
uttered  all  his  heart  in  certain  verses  that  have 
been  preserved  to  us  in  the  Book  of  Job.  To  him 
the  sky  was  a  solid  vault;  of  that  which  might 
exist  beyond  it,  he  never  even  dreamed.  Since 
his  time  how  vast  has  been  the  expansion  of  our 
astronomical  knowledge !  We  now  know  thirty 
millions  of  suns,  all  of  which  are  probably  at- 
tended by  planets,  giving  a  probable  total  of 
three  hundred  millions  of  other  worlds  within 
sight  of  our  astronomical  instruments.  Probably 
multitudes  of  these  are  inhabited  by  intelligent 
life;  it  is  even  possible  that  within  a  few  years 
more  we  shall  obtain  proof  positive  of  the  ex- 
istence of  an  older  civilization  than  our  own  upon 
the  planet  Mars.  How  vast  a  difference  between 
our  conception  of  the  universe  and  Job's  concep- 
tion of  it.  Yet  the  poem  of  that  simple  minded 
Arab  or  Jew  has  not  lost  one  particle  of  its  beauty 
and  value  because  of  this  difference.  Quite  the 
contrary!     With  every  new  astronomical  discov- 


202  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

ery  the  words  of  Job  take  grander  meanings  to 
us,  simply  because  he  was  truly  a  great  poet  and 
spoke  only  the  truth  that  was  In  his  heart  thou- 
sands of  years  ago.  Very  anciently  also  there 
was  a  Greek  story-teller  who  wrote  a  little  story 
about  a  boy  and  girl  In  the  country  called 
"  Daphnis  and  Chloe."  It  was  a  little  story, 
telling  In  the  simplest  language  possible  how  that 
boy  and  girl  fell  In  love  with  each  other,  and  did 
not  know  why,  and  all  the  Innocent  things  they 
said  to  each  other,  and  how  grown-up  people 
kindly  laughed  at  them  and  taught  them  some  of 
the  simplest  laws  of  life.  What  a  trifling  sub- 
ject, some  might  think.  But  that  story,  trans- 
lated Into  every  language  In  the  world,  still  reads 
like  a  new  story  to  us;  and  every  time  we  re-read 
it,  it  appears  still  more  beautiful,  because  It 
teaches  a  few  true  and  tender  things  about  inno- 
cence and  the  feeling  of  youth.  It  never  can 
grow  old,  any  more  than  the  girl  and  boy  whom 
it  describes.  Or,  to  descend  to  later  times,  about 
three  hundred  years  ago  a  French  priest  conceived 
the  idea  of  writing  down  the  history  of  a  student 
who  had  been  charmed  by  a  wanton  woman,  and 
led  by  her  Into  many  scenes  of  disgrace  and  pain. 
This  little  book,  called  "  Manon  Lescaut,"  de- 
scribes for  us  the  society  of  a  vanished  time,  a 
time  when  people  wore  swords  and  powdered 
their  hair,  a  time  when  everything  was  as  dlf' 


ON  READING  203 

ferent  as  possible  from  the  life  of  today.  But 
the  story  is  just  as  true  of  our  own  time  as  of  any 
time  in  civilization;  the  pain  and  the  sorrow  af- 
fect us  just  as  if  they  were  our  own;  and  the 
woman,  who  is  not  really  bad,  but  only  weak  and 
selfish,  charms  the  reader  almost  as  much  as  she 
charmed  her  victim,  until  the  tragedy  ends. 
Here  again  is  one  of  the  world's  great  books, 
that  cannot  die.  Or,  to  take  one  more  example 
out  of  a  possible  hundred,  consider  the  stories  of 
Hans  Andersen.  He  conceived  the  notion  that 
moral  truths  and  social  philosophy  could  be  better 
taught  through  little  fairy-tales  and  child  stories 
than  in  almost  any  other  way;  and  with  the  help 
of  hundreds  of  old  fashioned  tales,  he  made  a 
new  series  of  wonderful  stories  that  have  become 
a  part  of  every  library  and  are  read  in  all  coun- 
tries by  grown  up  people  much  more  than  by 
children.  There  is  in  this  astonishing  collection 
of  stories,  a  story  about  a  mermaid  which  I  sup- 
pose you  have  all  read.  Of  course  there  can  be 
no  such  thing  as  a  mermaid;  from  one  point  of 
view  the  story  is  quite  absurd.  But  the  emotions 
of  unselfishness  and  love  and  loyalty  which  the 
story  expresses  are  immortal,  and  so  beautiful 
that  we  forget  about  all  the  unreality  of  the 
framework;  we  see  only  the  eternal  truth  behind 
the  fable. 

You  will  understand  now  exactly  what  I  mean 


204  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

by  a  great  book.  What  about  the  choice  of 
books?  Some  years  ago  you  will  remember  that 
an  Englishman  of  science,  Sir  John  Lubbock, 
wrote  a  list  of  what  he  called  the  best  books  in 
the  world  —  or  at  least  the  best  hundred  books. 
Then  some  publishers  published  the  hundred 
books  in  cheap  form.  Following  the  example  of 
Sir  John,  other  literary  men  made  different  lists 
of  what  they  thought  the  best  hundred  books  in 
existence;  and  now  quite  enough  time  has  passed 
to  show  us  the  value  of  these  experiments.  They 
have  proved  utterly  worthless,  except  to  the  pub- 
lishers. Many  persons  may  buy  the  hundred 
books;  but  very  few  read  them.  And  this  is  not 
because  Sir  John  Lubbock's  idea  was  bad;  it  Is 
because  no  one  man  can  lay  down  a  definite 
course  of  reading  for  the  great  mass  of  differently 
constituted  minds.  Sir  John  expressed  only  his 
opinion  of  what  most  appealed  to  him;  another 
man  of  letters  would  have  made  a  different  list; 
probably  no  two  men  of  letters  would  have  made 
exactly  the  same  one.  The  choice  of  great  books 
must  under  all  circumstances  be  an  individual  one. 
In  short,  you  must  choose  for  yourselves  accord- 
ing to  the  light  that  is  in  you.  Very  few  persons 
are  so  many  sided  as  to  feel  inclined  to  give  their 
best  attention  to  many  different  kinds  of  litera- 
ture. In  the  average  of  cases  it  is  better  for  a 
man  to  confine  himself  to  a  small  class  of  sub- 


ON  READING  205 

jects  —  the  subjects  best  according  with  his  nat- 
ural powers  and  inclinations,  the  subjects  that 
please  him.  And  no  man  can  decide  for  us  with- 
out knowing  our  personal  character  and  disposi- 
tion perfectly  well  and  being  in  sympathy  with 
it,  where  our  powers  lie.  But  one  thing  is  easy 
to  do  —  that  is,  to  decide,  first,  what  subject  in 
literature  has  already  given  you  pleasure,  to  de- 
cide, secondly,  what  is  the  best  that  has  been 
written  upon  that  subject,  and  then  to  study  that 
best  to  the  exclusion  of  ephemeral  and  trifling 
books  which  profess  to  deal  with  the  same  theme, 
but  which  have  not  yet  obtained  the  approbation 
of  great  critics  or  of  a  great  public  opinion. 

Those  books  which  have  obtained  both  are  not 
so  many  in  number  as  you  might  suppose.  Each 
great  civilization  has  produced  only  two  or  three 
of  the  first  rank,  if  we  except  the  single  civiliza- 
tion of  the  Greeks.  The  sacred  books  embody- 
ing the  teaching  of  all  great  religions  necessarily 
take  place  in  the  first  rank,  even  as  literary  pro- 
ductions; for  they  have  been  polished  and  repol- 
Ished,  and  have  been  given  the  highest  possible 
literary  perfection  of  which  the  language  in  which 
they  are  written  is  capable.  The  great  epic 
poems  which  express  the  ideals  of  races,  these 
also  deserve  a  first  place.  Thirdly,  the  master- 
pieces of  drama,  as  reflecting  life,  must  be  con- 
sidered to  belong  to  the  highest  literature.     But 


2o6  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

how  many  books  are  thus  represented?  Not  very 
many.  The  best,  like  diamonds,  will  never  be 
found  In  great  quantities. 

Besides  such  general  indications  as  I  thus  ven- 
tured, something  may  be  said  regarding  a  few 
choice  books  —  those  which  a  student  should  wish 
to  possess  good  copies  of  and  read  all  his  life. 
There  are  not  many  of  these.  For  European 
students  it  would  be  necessary  to  name  a  number 
of  Greek  authors.  But  without  a  study  of  the 
classic  tongues  such  authors  could  be  of  much  less 
use  to  the  students  of  this  country;  moreover,  a 
considerable  knowledge  of  Greek  life  and  Greek 
civilization  is  necessary  to  quicken  appreciation 
of  them.  Such  knowledge  is  best  gained  through 
engravings,  pictures,  coins,  statues  —  through 
those  artistic  objects  which  enable  the  imagina- 
tion to  see  what  has  existed;  and  as  yet  the  artis- 
tic side  of  classical  study  is  scarcely  possible  in 
Japan,  for  want  of  pictorial  and  other  material. 
I  shall  therefore  say  very  little  regarding  the 
great  books  that  belong  to  this  category.  But  as 
the  whole  foundation  of  European  literature  rests 
upon  classical  study,  the  student  should  certainly 
attempt  to  master  the  outhnes  of  Greek  myth- 
ology, and  the  character  of  the  traditions  which 
inspired  the  best  of  Greek  Hterature  and  drama. 
You  can  scarcely  open  an  English  book  belonging 
to  any  high  class  of  literature,  In  which  you  will 


ON  READING  207 

not  find  allusions  to  Greek  beliefs,  Greek  stories, 
or  Greek  plays.  The  mythology  is  almost  nec- 
essary for  you;  but  the  vast  range  of  the  subject 
might  well  deter  most  of  you  from  attempting  a 
thorough  study  of  it.  A  thorough  study  of  it, 
however,  is  not  necessary.  What  is  necessary  is 
an  outhne  only;  and  a  good  book,  capable  of  giv- 
ing you  that  outline  in  a  vivid  and  attractive  man- 
ner would  be  of  inestimable  service.  In  French 
and  German  there  are  many  such  books;  in  Eng- 
lish, I  know  of  only  one,  a  volume  in  Bohn's 
Library,  Keightley's  ''  Mythology  of  Ancient 
Greece  and  Italy."  It  is  not  an  expensive  work; 
and  it  has  the  exceptional  quality  of  teaching  in  a 
philosophical  spirit.  As  for  the  famous  Greek 
books,  the  value  of  most  of  them  for  you  must  be 
small,  because  the  number  of  adequate  transla- 
tions is  small.  I  should  begin  by  saying  that  all 
verse  translations  are  useless.  No  verse  transla- 
tion from  the  Greek  can  reproduce  the  Greek 
verse  —  we  have  only  twenty  or  thirty  lines  of 
Homer  translated  by  Tennyson,  and  a  few  lines  of 
other  Greek  poets  translated  by  equally  able  men, 
which  are  at  all  satisfactory.  Under  all  circum- 
stances take  a  prose  translation  when  you  wish  to 
study  a  Greek  or  Latin  author.  We  should  of 
course  consider  Homer  first.  I  do  not  think  that 
you  can  afford  not  to  read  something  of  Homer. 
There  are  two  excellent  prose  translations  in  Eng- 


2o8  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

llsh,  one  of  the  Iliad  and  one  of  the  Odyssey. 
The  latter  is  for  you  the  more  important  of  the 
two  great  poems.  The  references  to  it  are  in- 
numerable in  all  branches  of  literature;  and  these 
references  refer  usually  to  the  poetry  of  its  theme, 
for  the  Odyssey  is  much  more  a  romance  than  is 
the  Iliad.  The  advantage  of  the  prose  transla- 
tion by  Lang  and  Butcher  is  that  it  preserves 
something  of  the  rolling  sound  and  music  of  the 
Greek  verse,  though  it  is  only  prose.  That  book 
I  should  certainly  consider  worth  keeping  con- 
stantly by  you;  its  utility  will  appear  to  you  at  a 
later  day.  The  great  Greek  tragedies  have  all 
been  translated;  but  I  should  not  so  strongly  rec- 
ommend these  translations  to  you.  It  would  be 
just  as  well,  in  most  cases,  to  familiarize  your- 
selves with  the  stories  of  the  dramas  through 
other  sources;  and  there  are  hundreds  of  these. 
You  should  at  least  know  the  subject  of  the  great 
dramas  of  Sophocles,  iEschylus,  and  above  all 
Euripides.  Greek  drama  was  constructed  upon  a 
plan  that  requires  much  study  to  understand  cor- 
rectly; it  is  not  necessary  that  you  should  under- 
stand these  matters  as  an  antiquarian  does,  but  it 
is  necessary  to  know  something  of  the  stories  of 
the  great  plays.  As  for  comedy,  the  works  of 
Aristophanes  are  quite  exceptional  in  their  value 
and  interest.  They  require  very  little  explana- 
tion; they  make  us  laugh  today  just  as  heartily 


ON  READING  209 

as  they  made  the  Athenians  laugh  thousands  of 
years  ago;  and  they  belong  to  immortal  literature. 
There  is  the  Bohn  translation  in  two  volumes, 
which  I  would  strongly  recommend.  Aristo- 
phanes is  one  of  the  great  Greek  dramatists  whom 
we  can  read  over  and  over  again,  gaining  at  every 
reading.  Of  the  lyrical  poets  there  is  also  one 
translation  likely  to  become  an  English  classic, 
although  a  modern  one;  that  is  Lang's  translation 
of  Theocritus,  a  tiny  little  book,  but  very  precious 
of  its  kind.  You  see  I  am  mentioning  very  few; 
but  these  few  would  mean  a  great  deal  for  you, 
should  you  use  them  properly.  Among  later 
Greek  work,  work  done  in  the  decline  of  the  old 
civilization,  there  is  one  masterpiece  that  the 
world  will  never  become  tired  of  —  I  mentioned 
it  before,  the  story  of  *'  Daphnis  and  Chloe.'* 
This  has  been  translated  into  every  language,  and 
I  am  sorry  to  say  that  the  best  translation  is  not 
English,  but  French  —  the  version  of  Amyot. 
But  there  are  many  English  translations.  That 
book  you  certainly  ought  to  read.  About  the 
Latin  authors,  it  is  not  here  necessary  to  say 
much.  There  are  very  good  prose  translations 
of  Virgil  and  Horace,  but  the  value  of  these  to 
you  can  not  be  very  great  without  a  knowledge 
of  Latin.  However,  the  story  of  the  ^Eneid  is 
necessary  to  know,  and  it  were  best  read  in  the 
version  of  Conington.     In  the  course  of  your  gen- 


2IO  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

eral  education  It  is  impossible  to  avoid  learning 
something  regarding  the  chief  Latin  writers  and 
thinkers;  but  there  is  one  Immortal  book  that  you 
may  not  have  often  seen  the  name  of;  and  It  Is  a 
book  everybody  should  read  —  I  mean  the 
"  Golden  Ass  "  of  Apulelus.  You  have  this  in  a 
good  English  translation.  It  Is  only  a  story  of 
sorcery,  but  one  of  the  most  wonderful  stories 
ever  written,  and  It  belongs  to  world  literature 
rather  than  to  the  literature  of  a  time. 

But  the  Greek  myths,  although  eternally  Im- 
perishable in  their  beauty,  are  not  more  intimately 
related  to  English  literature  than  are  the  myths 
of  the  ancient  English  religion,  the  religion  of  the 
Northern  races,  which  has  left  its  echoes  all 
through  our  forms  of  speech,  even  In  the  names 
of  the  days  of  the  week.  A  student  of  English 
literature  ought  to  know  something  about  North- 
ern mythology.  It  is  full  of  beauty  also,  beauty 
of  another  and  stranger  kind;  and  It  embodied 
one  of  the  noblest  warrior-faiths  that  ever  ex- 
isted, the  religion  of  force  and  courage.  You 
have  now  In  the  library  a  complete  collection  of 
Northern  poetry,  I  mean  the  two  volumes  of  the 
"  Corpus  Poeticum  Boreali."  Unfortunately  you 
have  not  as  yet  a  good  collection  of  the  Sagas  and 
Eddas.  But,  as  in  the  case  of  the  vaster  subject 
of  Greek  mythology,  there  is  an  excellent  small 
book  in  English,  giving  an  outline  of  all  that  is 


ON  READING  211 

important  —  I  mean  necessary  for  you  —  in  re- 
gard to  both  the  religion  and  the  literature  of  the 
Northern  races,  Mallet's  "Northern  Antiquities." 
Sir  Walter  Scott  contributed  the  most  valuable 
portion  of  the  translations  in  this  little  book;  and 
these  translations  have  stood  the  test  of  time  re- 
markably well.  The  introductory  chapters  by 
Bishop  Percy  are  old  fashioned,  but  this  fact  does 
not  in  the  least  diminish  the  stirring  value  of  the 
volume.  I  think  it  is  one  of  the  books  that  every 
student  should  try  to  possess. 

With  regard  to  the  great  modern  masterpieces 
translated  into  English  from  other  tongues,  I  can 
only  say  that  it  is  better  to  read  them  in  the  orig- 
inals, if  you  can.  If  you  can  read  Goethe's 
"  Faust  "  in  German,  do  not  read  it  in  English; 
and  If  you  can  read  Heine  in  German,  the  French 
translation  in  prose,  which  he  superintended,  and 
the  English  translations  (there  are  many  of 
them)  in  verse  can  be  of  no  use  to  you.  But  if 
German  be  too  difficult,  then  read  "  Faust "  in 
the  prose  version  of  Hayward,  as  revised  by  Dr. 
Buchhelm.  You  have  that  in  the  library;  and  it 
is  the  best  of  the  kind  In  existence.  "  Faust  "  is  a 
book  that  a  man  should  buy  and  keep,  and  read 
many  times  during  his  life.  As  for  Heine,  he  is  a 
world  poet,  but  he  loses  a  great  deal  in  transla- 
tion; and  I  can  only  recommend  the  French  prose 
version  of  him;  the  English  versions  of  Brown- 


212  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

ing  and  Lazarus  and  others  are  often  weak. 
Some  years  ago  a  series  of  extraordinary  trans- 
lations of  Heine  appeared  In  Blackwood's  Maga- 
zine; but  these  have  not  appeared,  I  beheve,  In 
book  form. 

As  for  Dante,  I  do  not  know  whether  he  can 
make  a  strong  appeal  to  you  In  any  language  ex- 
cept his  own;  and  you  must  understand  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  very  well  to  feel  how  wonderful  he  was. 
I  might  say  something  similar  about  other  great 
Italian  poets.  Of  the  French  dramatists,  you 
must  study  Mollere ;  he  Is  next  In  Importance  only 
to  Shakespeare.  But  do  not  read  him  In  any 
translation.  Here  I  should  say  positively,  that 
one  who  cannot  read  French  might  as  well  leave 
Mollere  alone;  the  English  language  cannot  re- 
produce his  delicacies  of  wit  and  allusion. 

As  for  modern  English  literature,  I  have  tried 
in  the  course  of  my  lectures  to  Indicate  the  few 
books  deserving  of  a  place  In  world-literature; 
and  I  need  scarcely  repeat  them  here.  Going 
back  a  little  further,  however,  I  should  like  to 
remind  you  again  of  the  extraordinary  merit  of 
Malory's  book,  the  "  Morte  D'Arthur,"  and  to 
say  that  it  Is  one  of  the  very  few  that  you  should 
buy  and  keep  and  read  often.  The  whole  spirit 
of  chivalry  Is  in  that  book;  and  I  need  scarcely  tell 
you  how  deep  is  the  relation  of  the  spirit  of  chiv- 


ON  READING  213 

airy  to  all  modern  English  literature.  I  do  not 
recommend  you  to  read  Milton,  unless  you  intend 
to  make  certain  special  studies  of  language;  the 
linguistic  value  of  Milton  is  based  upon  Greek 
and  Latin  literature.  As  for  his  lyrics  —  that  is 
another  matter.  Those  ought  to  be  studied.  As 
there  is  little  more  to  say,  except  by  way  of  sug- 
gestion, I  think  that  you  ought,  every  one  of  you, 
to  have  a  good  copy  of  Shakespeare,  and  to  read 
Shakespeare  through  once  every  year,  not  caring 
at  first  whether  you  can  understand  all  the  sen- 
tences or  not;  that  knowledge  can  be  acquired  at 
a  later  day.  I  am  sure  that  if  you  follow  this  ad- 
vice you  will  find  Shakespeare  become  larger 
every  time  that  you  read  him,  and  that  at  last  he 
will  begin  to  exercise  a  very  strong  and  very 
healthy  influence  upon  your  methods  of  thinking 
and  feeling.  A  man  does  not  require  to  be  a 
great  scholar  in  order  to  read  Shakespeare.  And 
what  is  true  of  reading  Shakespeare,  you  will  find 
to  be  true  also  in  lesser  degree  of  all  the  world's 
great  books.  You  will  find  it  true  of  Goethe's 
"  Faust."  You  will  find  it  true  of  the  best  chap- 
ters in  the  poems  of  Homer.  You  will  find  it 
true  of  the  best  plays  of  Moliere.  You  will  find 
it  true  of  Dante,  and  of  those  books  In  the  Eng- 
lish Bible  about  which  I  gave  a  short  lecture  last 
year.     And  therefore  I  do  not  think  that  I  can 


214  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

better  conclude  these  remarks  than  by  repeating 
an  old  but  very  excellent  piece  of  advice  which 
has  been  given  to  young  readers :  "  Whenever 
you  hear  of  a  new  book  being  published,  read  an 
old  one." 


CHAPTER  IX 

LITERATURE  AND   POLITICAL   OPINION 

It  has  been  for  some  time  my  purpose  to  de- 
liver a  little  lecture  illustrating  the  possible  rela- 
tion between  literature  and  politics  —  subjects 
that  seem  as  much  opposed  to  each  other  as  any 
two  subjects  could  be,  yet  most  intimately  re- 
lated. You  know  that  I  have  often  expressed 
the  hope  that  some  of  you  will  be  among  those 
who  make  the  future  literature  of  Japan,  the  lit- 
erature of  the  coming  generation;  and  in  this  con- 
nection, I  should  like  to  say  that  I  think  the  crea- 
tion of  Japanese  literature  (and  by  literature  I 
mean  especially  fiction  and  poetry)  to  be  a  polit- 
ical necessity.  If  "  political  necessity  "  seems  to 
you  too  strong  a  term,  I  shall  say  national  re- 
quirement; but  before  I  reach  the  end  of  this  lec- 
ture, I  think  you  will  acknowledge  that  I  used 
the  words  *'  political  necessity  "  in  a  strictly  cor- 
rect sense. 

In  order  to  explain  very  clearly  what  I  mean, 
I  must  first  ask  you  to  think  about  the  meaning 
of  public  opinion  in  national  politics.  Perhaps  in 
Japan  today  public  opinion  may  not  seem  to  you 

215 


2i6  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

of  paramount  Importance  In  deciding  matters  of 
statecraft,  though  you  will  acknowledge  that  it  is 
a  force  which  statesmen  have,  and  must  always 
have,  to  deal  with.  But  In  western  countries, 
where  the  social  conditions  are  very  different,  and 
where  the  middle  classes  represent  the  money 
power  of  the  nation,  public  opinion  may  mean 
almost  everything.  I  need  scarcely  tell  you  that 
the  greatest  force  in  England  Is  public  opinion  — 
that  is  to  say,  the  general  national  opinion,  or 
rather  feeling,  upon  any  subject  of  moment. 
Sometimes  this  opinion  may  be  wrong,  but  right 
or  wrong  is  not  here  the  question.  It  is  the 
power  that  decides  for  or  against  war;  it  is  the 
power  that  decides  for  or  against  reform;  it  is 
the  power  that  to  a  very  great  degree  influences 
English  foreign  policy.  The  same  may  be 
said  regarding  public  opinion  in  France.  And 
although  Germany  is,  next  to  Russia,  the  most 
imperial  of  European  powers,  and  possesses  the 
most  tremendous  military  force  that  the  world 
has  even  seen,  public  opinion  there  also  is  still  a 
great  power  in  politics.  But  most  of  all,  America 
offers  the  example  of  pubHc  opinion  as  govern- 
ment. There  indeed  the  sentiment  of  the  nation 
may  be  said  to  decide  almost  every  question  of 
great  importance,  whether  domestic  or  foreign. 

Now  the  whole  force  of  such  opinion  in  the 
West  depends  very  much  for  its  character  upon 


LITERATURE  217 

knowledge.  When  people  are  correctly  In- 
formed upon  a  subject,  they  are  likely,  in  the 
mass,  to  think  correctly  in  regard  to  it.  When 
they  are  ignorant  of  the  matter,  they  are  of 
course  apt  to  think  wrongly  about  it.  But  this 
Is  not  all.  What  we  do  not  know  is  always  a 
cause  of  uneasiness,  of  suspicion,  or  of  fear. 
When  a  nation  thinks  or  feels  suspiciously  upon 
any  subject,  whether  through  ignorance  or  other- 
wise, its  action  regarding  the  subject  is  tolerably 
certain  to  be  unjust.  Nations,  hke  individuals, 
have  their  prejudices,  their  superstitions,  their 
treacheries,  their  vices.  All  these  are  of  course 
the  result  of  ignorance  or  of  selfishness,  or  of 
both  together.  But  perhaps  we  had  better  say 
roundly  that  all  the  evil  In  this  world  is  the  result 
of  ignorance,  since  selfishness  itself  could  not  exist 
but  for  ignorance.  You  will  also  have  remarked 
in  your  reading  of  modern  history  that  the  more 
intelligent  and  educated,  that  is  to  say  the  less 
ignorant,  a  nation  is,  the  more  likely  is  Its  policy 
in  foreign  matters  to  be  marked  by  something  re- 
sembling justice. 

Now  how  is  national  feeling  created  today 
upon  remote  and  foreign  subjects?  Perhaps 
some  of  you  will  answer,  by  newspapers  —  and 
the  remark  would  contain  some  truth.  But  only 
a  little  truth;  for  newspapers  do  not  as  a  rule 
treat  of  other  than  current  events,  and  the  writers 


2i8  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

of  newspapers  themselves  can  write  only  out  of 
the  knowledge  they  happen  to  have  regarding 
foreign  and  unfamiliar  matters.  I  should  say 
that  the  newspaper  press  has  more  to  do  with 
the  making  of  prejudice  than  with  the  dissemina- 
tion of  accurate  knowledge  in  regard  to  such  mat- 
ters, and  that  at  all  times  its  influence  can  be  only 
of  the  moment.  The  real  power  that  shapes 
opinion  in  regard  to  other  nations  and  other  civil- 
izations is  literature  —  fiction  and  poems.  What 
one  people  in  Europe  knows  about  another  people 
is  largely  obtained,  not  from  serious  volumes  of 
statistics,  or  grave  history,  or  learned  books  of 
travel,  but  from  the  literature  of  that  people  — 
the  literature  that  is  an  expression  of  its  emo- 
tional life. 

Do  not  think  that  public  opinion  in  western 
countries  can  be  made  by  the  teaching  of  great 
minds,  or  by  the  scholarship  of  a  few.  Public 
opinion,  in  my  meaning,  is  not  an  intellectual 
force  at  all.  It  could  not  possibly  be  made  an 
intellectual  force.  It  is  chiefly  emotional,  and 
may  be  a  moral  force,  but  nothing  more.  Never- 
theless, even  English  ministers  of  state  have  to 
respect  it  always,  and  have  to  obey  it  very  often 
indeed.  And  it  is  largely  made,  as  I  have  told 
you,  by  literature  —  not  the  literature  of  philoso- 
phy and  of  science,  but  the  literature  of  imagina- 
tion and  of  feeling.     Only  thousands  of  people 


LITERATURE  219 

can  read  books  of  pure  science  and  philosophy; 
but  millions  read  stories  and  verses  that  touch  the 
heart,  and  through  the  heart  influence  the  judg- 
ment. 

I  should  say  that  English  public  feeling  regard- 
ing many  foreign  countries  has  been  very  largely 
made  by  such  literature.  But  I  have  time  only 
to  give  you  one  striking  example  —  the  case  of 
Russia.  When  I  was  a  boy  the  public  knew  ab- 
solutely nothing  about  Russia  worth  knowing,  ex- 
cept that  the  Russian  soldiers  were  very  hard 
fighters.  But  fighting  qualities,  much  as  the  Eng- 
lish admired  them,  are  to  be  found  even  among 
savages,  and  English  experience  with  Russian 
troops  did  not  give  any  reason  for  a  higher  kind 
of  admiration.  Indeed,  up  to  the  middle  of  the 
present  century  the  Russians  were  scarcely  con- 
sidered In  England  as  real  human  kindred.  The 
little  that  was  known  of  Russian  customs  and 
Russian  government  was  not  of  a  kind  to  correct 
hostile  feeling  —  quite  the  contrary.  The  cruel- 
ties of  military  law,  the  horrors  of  Siberian  pris- 
ons,—  these  were  often  spoken  of;  and  you  will 
find  even  In  the  early  poetry  of  Tennyson,  even 
in  the  text  of  "  The  Princess,"  references  to  Rus- 
sia of  a  very  grim  kind. 

All  that  was  soon  to  be  changed.  Presently 
translations  into  French,  into  German,  and  into 
English,  of  the  great  Russian  authors  began  to 


220  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

make  their  appearance.  I  believe  the  first  re- 
markable work  of  this  sort  directly  translated  into 
English  was  Tolstoi's  "  Cossacks,"  the  translator 
being  the  American  minister  at  St.  Petersburg, 
Mr.  Schuyler.  The  great  French  writer  Meri- 
mee  had  already  translated  some  of  the  best  work 
of  Gogol  and  Pushkin.  These  books  began  to 
excite  extraordinary  interest.  But  a  much  more 
extraordinary  interest  was  aroused  by  the  sub- 
sequent translations  of  the  great  novels  of  Tur- 
gueniev,  Dostoievsky,  and  others.  Turgueniev 
especially  became  a  favourite  in  every  cultured 
circle  in  Europe.  He  represented  living  Russia 
as  it  was  —  the  heart  of  the  people,  and  not  only 
the  heart  of  the  people  but  the  feelings  and  the 
manners  of  all  classes  in  the  great  empire.  His 
books  quickly  became  world-books,  nineteenth 
century  classics,  the  reading  of  which  was  con- 
sidered indispensable  for  literary  culture.  After 
him  many  other  great  works  of  Russian  fiction 
were  translated  into  nearly  all  the  languages  of 
Europe.  Nor  was  this  all.  The  great  intellect 
of  Russia,  suddenly  awakening,  had  begun  to 
make  itself  heavily  felt  in  the  most  profound 
branches  of  practical  science.  The  most  remark- 
able discovery  of  modern  times  in  chemistry,  con- 
cerning the  law  of  atomic  weights,  was  a  Russian 
discovery;  the  most  remarkable  work  of  physiog- 
raphy accomplished  in  regard  to  Northern  Asia 


LITERATURE  221 

was  the  work  of  Prince  Kropotkin,  who  still  lives, 
and  writes  wonderful  books  and  memoirs.  I  am 
mentioning  only  two  cases  out  of  hundreds.  In 
medicine,  in  linguistics,  in  many  other  scientific 
directions,  the  influence  of  Russian  work  and 
thought  is  now  widely  recognized.  But  however 
scientific  men  might  find  reason  to  respect  the 
Russian  intellect,  it  is  not  by  intellect  that  a  na- 
tion can  make  itself  understood  abroad.  The 
great  work  of  making  Russia  understood  was  ac- 
complished chiefly  by  her  novelists  and  story- 
tellers. After  having  read  those  wonderful 
books,  written  with  a  simple  strength  of  which  we 
have  no  parallel  example  in  western  literature,  ex- 
cept the  works  of  a  few  Scandinavian  writers,  the 
great  nations  of  the  West  could  no  longer  think 
of  Russians  as  a  people  having  no  kinship  with 
them.  Those  books  proved  that  the  human  heart 
felt  and  loved  and  suffered  in  Russia  just  as  in 
England,  or  France,  or  Germany;  but  they  also 
taught  something  about  the  peculiar  and  very 
great  virtues  of  the  Russian  people,  the  Russian 
masses  —  their  infinite  patience,  their  courage, 
their  loyalty,  and  their  great  faith.  For,  though 
we  could  not  call  these  pictures  of  life  beautiful 
(many  of  them  are  very  terrible,  very  cruel), 
there  is  much  of  what  is  beautiful  in  human  na- 
ture to  be  read  between  the  lines.  The  gloom  of 
Turgueniev  and  of  his  brothers  in  fiction  only 


222  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

serves  to  make  the  light  seem  more  beautiful  by 
contrast.  And  what  has  been  the  result?  A 
total  change  of  western  feeling  towards  the  Rus- 
sian people.  I  do  not  mean  that  western  opinion 
has  been  at  all  changed  as  regards  the  Russian 
government.  Politically  Russia  remains  the 
nightmare  of  Europe.  But  what  the  people  are 
has  been  learned,  and  well  learned,  through  Rus- 
sian literature;  and  a  general  feeling  of  kindli- 
ness and  of  human  sympathy  has  taken  the  place 
of  the  hatred  and  dislike  that  formerly  used  to 
tone  popular  utterances  in  regard  to  Russians  in 
general. 

Now  you  will  see  very  clearly  what  I  mean, 
what  I  am  coming  to.  Vast  and  powerful  as  the 
Russian  nation  is,  it  has  great  faults,  great  de- 
ficiencies, such  as  have  not  characterized  the  peo- 
ple of  this  country  for  thousands  of  years.  So 
far  as  civilization  signifies  manners  and  morals, 
education  and  industry,  I  should  certainly  say  that 
the  Japanese  even  hundreds  of  years  ago  were 
more  civilized  as  a  nation  than  the  Russians  of 
today,  than  the  Russians  can  be  even  for  a  long 
time  to  come.  Yet  what  is  known  in  western 
countries  about  Japan?  Almost  nothing.  I  do 
not  mean  that  there  are  not  now  hundreds  of  rich 
people  who  have  seen  Japan,  and  have  learned 
something  about  it.  Thousands  of  books  about 
Japan  have  been  written  by  such  travellers.     But 


LITERATURE  225 

these  travellers  and  writers  represent  very  little; 
certainly  they  do  not  represent  national  opinion 
in  any  way.  The  great  western  peoples  —  the 
masses  of  them  —  know  just  as  little  about  Japan 
today  as  was  known  about  Russia  at  the  beginning 
of  this  century.  They  know  that  Japan  can  fight 
well,  and  she  has  railroads,  and  ships  of  war;  and 
that  is  about  all  that  has  made  an  impression 
upon  the  public  mind.  The  intellectual  classes  of 
Europe  know  a  great  deal  more,  but  as  I  have 
said,  these  do  not  make  public  opinion,  which  is 
largely  a  matter  of  feeling,  not  of  thinking.  Na- 
tional feeling  can  not  be  reached  through  the 
head;  it  must  be  reached  through  the  heart.  And 
there  is  but  one  class  of  men  capable  of  doing 
this  —  your  own  men  of  letters.  Ministers, 
diplomats,  representatives  of  learned  societies  — 
none  of  these  can  do  it.  But  a  single  great  nov- 
elist, a  single  great  poet,  might  very  well  do  it. 
No  one  foreign  in  blood  and  in  speech  could  do 
it,  by  any  manner  of  means.  It  can  only  be  done 
by  Japanese  literature,  thought  by  Japanese, 
written  by  Japanese,  and  totally  uninfluenced  by 
foreign  thinking  and  foreign  feeling. 

Let  me  try  to  put  this  truth  a  little  more  plainly 
to  you  by  way  of  illustration.  At  present  the 
number  of  books  written  by  foreigners  about 
Japan  reaches  many  thousands;  every  year  at 
least  a  dozen  new  books  appear  on  the  subject; 


224  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

and  nevertheless  the  western  reading  public 
knows  nothing  about  Japan.  Nor  could  It  be 
said  that  these  books  have  even  resulted  in  les- 
sening the  very  strong  prejudices  that  western 
people  feel  toward  all  Oriental  nations  —  preju- 
dices partly  the  result  of  natural  race-feeling,  and 
partly  the  result  of  religious  feeling.  Huxley 
once  observed  that  no  man  could  imagine  the 
power  of  religious  prejudice  until  he  tried  to  fight 
it.  As  a  general  rule  the  men  who  try  to  fight 
against  western  prejudices  in  regard  to  the  re- 
ligions of  other  peoples,  are  abused  whenever 
possible,  and  when  not  possible,  they  are  either 
ignored  or  opposed  by  all  possible  means.  Even 
the  grand  Oxford  undertaking  of  the  translations 
of  the  sacred  books  of  the  eastern  races  was  very 
strongly  denounced  in  many  quarters;  and  the 
translators  are  still  accused  of  making  eastern  re- 
ligions seem  more  noble  than  they  really  could  be. 
I  mention  this  fact  only  as  an  illustration  of  one 
form  of  prejudice;  and  there  are  hundreds  of 
others.  At  the  present  time  any  person  who  at- 
tempts to  oppose  these,  has  no  chance  of  being 
fairly  heard.  But  the  general  opinion  is  that  any 
good  things  said  about  the  civilization,  the  ethics, 
the  industry,  or  the  faith  of  Japan,  are  said  for 
selfish  motives  —  for  reasons  of  flattery  or  fear 
or  personal  gain;  and  that  the  unkind,  untruthful, 
and  stupid  things  said,  are  said  by  brave,  frank, 


LITERATURE  225 

independent,  and  very  wise  people.  And  why  is 
this?  Because  the  good  and  bad  alike  have  been 
said  only  by  foreigners.  What  any  foreigner 
now  says  about  Japanese  life  and  thought  and 
character  will  have  very  little  influence  on  the 
good  side,  though  it  may  have  considerable  in- 
fluence on  the  other  side.  This  is  inevitable. 
Moreover,  remember  that  the  work  done  by  for- 
eigners in  the  most  appreciative  and  generous 
directions  has  not  been  of  a  kind  that  could  reach 
the  western  mass  of  readers.  It  could  reach  only 
small  intellectual  circles.  You  can  not  touch  the 
minds  of  a  great  people  by  mere  books  of  travel, 
or  by  essays,  or  by  translations  of  literature  hav- 
ing nothing  in  common  with  western  feeling. 
You  can  reach  them  only  through  more  humane 
literature,  fiction  and  poetry,  novels  and  stories. 
If  only  foreigners  had  written  about  Russia,  the 
English  people  would  still  think  of  the  Russian 
upper  class  as  barbarians,  and  would  scarcely 
think  of  the  great  nation  itself  as  being  humanly 
related  to  them.  All  prejudices  are  due  to  ignor- 
ance; ignorance  can  be  dissipated  best  by  appeals 
to  the  nobler  emotions.  And  the  nobler  emotions 
are  best  inspired  by  pure  literature. 

I  should  suppose  that  more  than  one  of  you 
would  feel  inclined  to  ask,  "  What  need  we  care 
about  the  prejudices  and  the  stupidities  of  ignor- 
ant people  in  western  countries?  "     Well,  I  have 


226  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

already  told  you  that  at  the  present  time  these 
relatively  Ignorant  and  stupid  millions  have  a 
great  deal  to  do  with  state-policy.  It  is  the  opin- 
ion of  the  Ignorant,  much  more  than  the  opinion 
of  the  wise,  that  regulates  the  policy  of  western 
governments  with  foreign  nations.  That  would 
be  a  good  reason  of  itself.  But  I  will  now  go 
further,  and  say  that  I  think  the  absence  of  a 
modern  Japanese  literature,  such  as  I  am  advo- 
cating. Is  Indirectly  to  be  regretted  also  for  com- 
mercial reasons.  It  Is  quite  true  that  commerce 
and  trade  are  not  exactly  moral  occupations;  they 
are  conducted  according  to  relative  morality,  per- 
haps, not  according  to  positive  morality.  In 
short,  business  is  not  moral.  It  Is  a  kind  of  com- 
petition; and  all  competitions  are  in  the  nature 
of  war.  But  In  this  war,  which  is  necessary,  and 
which  can  not  be  escaped,  a  very  great  deal  de- 
pends upon  the  feelings  with  which  the  antagon- 
ists regard  each  other.  A  very  great  deal  de- 
pends upon  sympathy,  even  In  business,  upon  an 
understanding  of  the  simplest  feelings  regarding 
right  and  wrong,  pleasure  and  pain;  for,  at  bot- 
tom, all  human  Interests  are  based  upon  these. 
I  am  quite  certain  that  a  Japanese  literature  cap- 
able of  creating  sympathy  abroad  would  have  a 
marked  effect  In  ameliorating  business  conditions 
and  in  expanding  commercial  possibilities.  The 
great  mass  of  business  is  risk.     Now  men  are 


LITERATURE  227 

more  or  less  in  the  position  of  enemies,  when  they 
have  to  risk  without  perfect  knowledge  of  all  the 
conditions  upon  the  other  side.  In  short,  people 
are  afraid  of  what  they  do  not  understand.  And 
there  is  no  way  by  which  the  understanding  could 
be  so  quickly  imparted  as  through  the  labours  of 
earnest  men  of  letters.  I  might  mention  in  this 
connection  that  I  have  seen  lately  letters  written 
by  merchants  in  a  foreign  country,  asking  for  in- 
formation in  regard  to  conditions  in  this  country, 
which  J)roved  the  writers  to  know  even  less  about 
Japan  than  they  know  about  the  moon.  In  ten 
years,  two  or  three  — <  nay,  even  one  great  book 
I —  would  have  the  effect  of  educating  whole  busi- 
ness circles,  whole  millions  of  people  in  regard  to 
what  is  true  and  good  in  this  country. 

Now  I  have  put  these  thoughts  before  you  in 
the  roughest  and  simplest  way  possible,  not  be- 
cause I  think  that  they  represent  a  complete  argu- 
ment on  the  subject,  but  because  I  trust  they  con- 
tain something  which  will  provoke  you  to  think 
very  seriously  about  the  matter.  A  man  may  do 
quite  as  great  a  service  to  his  country  by  writing 
a  book  as  by  winning  a  battle.  And  you  had 
proof  of  this  fact  the  other  day,  when  a  young 
English  writer  fell  sick,  with  the  result  that  all 
over  the  world  the  cables  were  set  in  motion  to 
express  to  him  the  sympathy  of  millions  and 
millions    of  people,    while   kings    and   emperors 


228  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

asked  about  his  health.  What  had  this  young 
man  done  ?  Nothing  except  to  write  a  few  short 
stories  and  a  few  little  songs  that  made  all  Eng- 
lishmen understand  each  other's  heart  better  than 
before,  and  that  had  made  other  nations  better 
understand  the  English.  Such  a  man  is  really 
worth  to  his  country  more  than  a  king.  If  you 
will  remember  this,  I  believe  the  lecture  I  have 
given  will  bear  good  fruit  at  some  future  day. 


CHAPTER  X 

FAREWELL   ADDRESS 

Now  that  the  term  comes  to  a  close,  I  think 
that  it  would  be  well  to  talk  about  the  possible 
values  of  the  studies  which  we  have  made  to- 
gether, in  relation  to  Japanese  literature.  For, 
as  I  have  often  said,  the  only  value  of  foreign 
literary  studies  to  you  (using  the  word  literary 
in  the  artistic  sense)  must  be  that  of  their  effect 
upon  your  own  capacity  to  make  literature  in  your 
own  tongue.  Just  as  a  Frenchman  does  not  write 
English  books  or  a  German  French  books,  except 
in  the  way  of  scientific  treatise,  so  the  Japanese 
scholar  who  makes  literature  will  not  waste  time 
by  attempting  to  make  it  in  another  language  than 
his  own.  And  as  his  own  is  so  very  differently 
constructed  in  all  respects  from  the  European  lan- 
guages, he  can  scarcely  hope  to  obtain  much  in  the 
way  of  new  form  from  the  study  of  French  or 
English  or  German.  So  I  think  that  we  may  say 
the  chief  benefit  of  these  studies  to  you  must  be 
in  thought,  imagination  and  feeling.  From  west- 
ern thought  and  imagination  and  feeling  very 
much  indeed  can  be  obtained  which  will  prove 

helpful  in  enriching  and  strengthening  the  Japan- 

229 


230  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

ese  literature  of  the  future.  It  Is  by  such  studies 
that  all  western  languages  obtain  —  and  obtain 
continually  —  new  life  and  strength.  English 
literature  owes  something  to  almost  every  other 
literature,  not  only  in  Europe,  but  even  in  the 
whole  civilized  world.  The  same  can  be  said 
of  French  and  German  literature  —  perhaps  also, 
though  in  less  degree,  of  modern  Italian.  But 
notice  that  the  original  plant  is  not  altered  by  the 
new  sap;  it  is  only  made  stronger  and  able  to 
bear  finer  flowers.  As  English  literature  re- 
mains essentially  English  In  spite  of  the  riches 
gained  from  all  other  literatures,  so  should  future 
Japanese  literature  remain  purely  Japanese,  no 
matter  how  much  benefit  It  may  obtain  from  the 
ideas  and  the  arts  of  the  West. 

If  you  were  to  ask  me,  however,  whether  I 
knew  of  any  great  changes  so  far,  I  fear  that  I 
should  be  obliged  to  say,  "  no.^'  Up  to  the  pres- 
ent I  think  that  there  has  been  a  great  deal  of 
translation  and  imitation  and  adoption  Into  Jap- 
anese, from  western  literatures,  but  I  do  not 
think  that  there  has  been  what  we  call  true  assimi- 
lation. Literature  must  be  creative,  and  borrow- 
ing, or  Imitating,  or  adapting  material  In  the  raw 
state  —  none  of  this  Is  creative.  Yet  It  Is  nat- 
ural that  things  should  be  so.  This  Is  the  period 
of  assimilation;  later  on  the  fine  result  will  show, 
when  all  this  foreign  material  has  been  trans- 


FAREWELL  ADDRESS  231 

muted,  within  the  crucible  of  literature,  into 
purely  Japanese  materials.  But  this  can  not  be 
done  quickly. 

Now  I  want  to  say  something  about  the  man- 
ner in  which  I  imagine  that  these  changes,  and  a 
new  literature,  must  come  about.  I  believe  that 
there  will  have  to  be  a  romantic  movement  in 
Japan,  of  a  much  more  deep-reaching  kind  than 
may  now  appear  credible.  I  think  that  —  to  say 
the  strangest  thing  first  —  the  language  of  schol- 
arship will  have  to  be  thrown  away  for  purposes 
of  creative  art.  I  think  that  a  time  must  come 
when  the  scholar  will  not  be  ashamed  to  write  in 
the  language  of  the  common  people,  to  make  it  a 
vehicle  of  his  best  and  strongest  thought,  to  enter 
into  competition  with  artists  who  would  now  be 
classed  as  uneducated,  perhaps  even  vulgar  men. 
Perhaps  it  will  seem  a  strange  thing  to  say,  yet  I 
think  that  there  is  no  doubt  about  it.  Very  prob- 
ably almost  any  university  scholar  consciously  or 
unconsciously  despises  the  colloquial  art  of  the 
professional  story-teller  and  the  writer  of  popular 
plays  in  popular  speech;  nevertheless,  if  we  can 
judge  at  all  by  the  history  of  literary  evolutions  in 
other  countries,  it  is  the  despised  drama  and  the 
despised  popular  story  and  the  vulgar  song  of 
the  people  which  will  prove  the  sources  of  future 
Japanese  literature  —  a  finer  literature  than  any 
which  has  hitherto  been  produced. 


232  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

I  have  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  Shakespeare 
was  considered  very  vulgar  In  the  time  when  he 
wrote  his  plays  —  at  least  by  common  opinion. 
There  were  a  few  men  Intelligent  enough  to  feel 
that  his  work  was  more  aUve  than  any  other 
drama  of  the  time.  But  these  were  exceptional 
men.  And  you  know  that  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury the  classical  spirit  was  just  as  strong  In  Eng- 
land as  it  is  now,  or  has  been,  in  Japan.  The  re- 
proach of  the  "  vulgar,"  I  mean  the  reproach  of 
vulgarity,  would  haVe  been  brought  in  Pope's 
time  against  anybody  who  should  have  tried  to 
write  in  the  form  which  we  now  know  to  be  much 
superior.  I  have  told  you  also  how  the  great 
literatures  of  France  and  Germany  were  obliged 
to  pass  through  a  revolution  against  classical 
forms,  which  revolution  brought  into  existence 
the  most  glorious  work,  both  in  poetry  and  prose, 
that  either  country  ever  produced. 

But  remember  how  the  revolution  began  to 
work  in  all  these  countries  of  the  West.  It  began 
with  a  careful  and  loving  study  of  the  despised  oral 
literature  of  the  common  people.  It  meant  the 
descent  of  great  scholars  from  their  thrones  of 
learning  to  mix  with  peasants  and  ignorant  peo- 
ple, to  speak  their  dialects,  to  sympathize  with 
their  simple  but  deep  and  true  emotions.  I  do 
not  say  that  the  scholar  went  to  live  In  a  farm- 
house, or  to  share  the  poverty  and  misery  of  the 


FAREWELL  ADDRESS  233 

wretched  in  great  cities;  I  mean  only  that  he  de- 
scended to  them  in  spirit  —  sympathized  with 
them  —  conquered  his  prejudices  —  learned  to 
love  them  for  the  simple  goodness  and  the  simple 
truth  in  their  uneducated  natures.  I  think  I  told 
you  before  that  even  at  one  period  of  old  Greek 
literature,  the  Greek  had  to  do  something  of  very 
nearly  the  same  kind.  So  I  say  that,  in  my  humx- 
ble  opinion,  a  future  literature  in  this  country 
must  be  more  or  less  founded  upon  a  sympathy 
with  and  a  love  for  the  common,  ignorant  people, 
the  great  mass  of  the  national  humanity. 

Now  let  me  try  to  explain  how  and  why  these 
things  have  come  to  pass  in  almost  every  civilized 
country.  The  natural  tendency  of  society  is  to 
produce  class  distinctions,  and  everywhere  the 
necessary  tendency  in  the  highest  classes  must  be 
to  conservatism  —  elegant  conservatism.  Con- 
servatism and  exclusiveness  have  their  values;  and 
I  do  not  mean  to  suggest  the  least  disrespect  to- 
ward them.  But  conservatism  invariably  tends  to 
fixity,  to  mannerisms,  to  a  hard  crystallization. 
At  length  refined  society  obliges  everybody  to  do 
and  say  according  to  rule  —  to  express  or  to  re- 
press thought  and  feeling  in  the  same  way.  Of 
course  men's  hearts  can  not  be  entirely  changed 
by  rule;  but  such  a  tyranny  of  custom  can  be  made 
that  everybody  is  afraid  to  express  thought  or  to 
utter  feeling  in  a  really  natural  way.     When  life 


234  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

becomes  intensely  artificial,  severely  conventional, 
literature  begins  to  die.  Then,  western  experi- 
ence shows  that  there  is  one  cure;  nothing  can 
bring  back  the  failing  life  except  a  frank  return 
to  the  unconventional,  a  frank  return  to  the  life 
and  thought  of  the  common  people,  who  represent 
after  all  the  soil  from  which  everything  human 
springs.  When  a  language  becomes  hopelessly 
petrified  by  rules,  it  can  be  softened  and  strength- 
ened and  vivified  by  taking  it  back  to  its  real 
source,  the  people,  and  soaking  it  there  as  in  a 
bath.  Everywhere  this  necessity  has  shown  it- 
self; everywhere  it  has  been  resisted  with  all  the 
strength  of  pride  and  prejudice;  but  everywhere 
its  outcome  has  been  the  same.  French  or  Ger- 
man or  English  alike,  after  having  exhausted  all 
the  resources  of  scholarship  to  perfect  literature, 
have  found  literature  beginning  to  dry  and  wither 
on  their  hands ;  and  have  been  obliged  to  remove 
it  from  the  atmosphere  of  the  schools  and  to 
resurrect  it  by  means  of  the  literature  of  the  ig- 
norant. As  this  has  happened  everywhere  else, 
I  can  not  help  believing  that  it  must  happen  here. 
Yet  do  not  think  that  I  mean  to  speak  at  all 
slightingly  about  the  value  of  exact  learning. 
Quite  the  contrary.  I  hold  that  it  is  the  man  of 
exact  learning  who  best  —  providing  that  he  has 
a  sympathetic  nature  —  can  master  to  good  result 


FAREWELL  ADDRESS  235 

the  common  speech  and  the  unlettered  poetry.  A 
Cambridge  education,  for  example,  did  not  pre- 
vent Tennyson  from  writing  astonishing  ballads 
or  dramatic  poems  in  ballad  measure  in  the  dif- 
ficult dialect  of  the  northern  English  peasant. 
Indeed,  in  English  literature  the  great  Romantic 
reformers  were  all,  or  nearly  all,  well  schooled 
men,  but  they  were  men  who  had  artistic  spirit 
enough  to  conquer  the  prejudices  with  which  they 
were  born,  and  without  heeding  the  mockery  of 
their  own  class,  bravely  worked  to  extract  from 
simple  peasant  lore  those  fresh  beauties  which 
give  such  desirable  qualities  to  Victorian  poetry. 
Indeed,  some  went  further  —  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
for  example,  who  rode  about  the  country,  going 
into  the  homes  of  the  poorest  people,  eating  with 
them  and  drinking  with  them,  and  everywhere 
coaxing  them  to  sing  him  a  song  or  tell  him  a 
story  of  the  past.  I  suppose  there  were  many 
people  who  would  then  have  laughed  at  Scott. 
But  those  little  peasant  songs  which  he  picked  out 
started  the  new  English  poetry.  The  whole  lit- 
erary tone  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  changed 
by  them.  Therefore  I  should  certainly  venture 
to  hope  that  there  yet  may  be  a  Japanese  Walter 
Scott,  whose  learning  will  not  prevent  him  from 
sympathizing  with  the  unlearned. 

Now  I  have  said  quite  enough  on  that  subject; 


236  TALKS  TO  WRITERS 

and  I  have  ventured  It  only  through  a  sense  of 
duty.  The  rest  of  what  I  have  to  say  refers 
only  to  literary  work. 

I  suppose  that  most  of  you,  on  leaving  the  Uni- 
versity, win  step  Into  some  profession  likely  to 
absorb  a  great  deal  of  your  time.  Under  these 
circumstances  many  a  young  man  who  loves  litera- 
ture resigns  himself  foolishly  to  give  up  his  pleas- 
ures In  this  direction ;  such  young  scholars  Imagine 
that  they  have  no  time  now  for  poetry  or  romance 
or  drama  —  not  even  for  much  private  study.  I 
think  that  this  is  a  very  great  mistake,  and  that  it 
is  the  busy  man  who  can  best  give  us  new  litera- 
ture —  with  the  solitary  exception  perhaps  of 
poetry.  Great  poetry  requires  leisure,  and  much 
time  for  solitary  thinking.  But  In  other  depart- 
ments of  literature  I  can  assure  you  that  the  men- 
of-letters  throughout  the  West  have  been,  and 
still  are,  to  a  great  extent,  very  busy  men.  Some 
are  In  the  government  service,  some  In  post  of- 
fices, some  In  the  army  and  navy  (and  you  know 
how  busy  military  and  naval  officers  have  to  be), 
some  are  bankers,  judges,  consuls,  governors  of 
provinces,  even  merchants  —  though  these  are 
few.  The  fact  is  that  it  is  almost  impossible  for 
anybody  to  live  merely  by  producing  fine  litera- 
ture, and  that  the  literary  man  must  have,  in  most 
cases,  an  occupation.  Every  year  the  necessity 
for  this  becomes  greater.     But  the  principle  of 


FAREWELL  ADDRESS  237 

literary  work  is  really  not  to  do  much  at  one  time, 
but  to  do  a  little  at  regular  intervals.  I  doubt 
whether  any  of  you  can  ever  be  so  busy  that  you 
will  not  be  able  to  spare  twenty  minutes  or  half 
an  hour  in  the  course  of  one  day  to  literature. 
Even  If  you  should  give  only  ten  minutes  a  day, 
that  will  mean  a  great  deal  at  the  end  of  the 
year.  Put  it  In  another  way.  Can  you  not  write 
five  lines  of  literary  work  daily?  If  you  can,  the 
question  of  being  busy  Is  settled  at  once.  Multi- 
ply three  hundred  and  sixty-five  by  five.  That 
means  a  very  respectable  amount  of  work  In 
twelve  months.  How  much  better  If  you  could 
determine  to  write  twenty  or  thirty  lines  every 
day.  I  hope  that  If  any  of  you  really  love  litera- 
ture you  will  remember  these  few  words,  and 
never  think  yourselves  too  busy  to  study  a  little, 
even  though  It  be  only  for  ten  or  fifteen  minutes 
every  day.    And  now  good-bye. 


INDEX 


TOPICS 

Adjectives,  78,  83,  85 
Antithesis,  95 
Art,  aristocratic,  159 
democratic,  160  sq 
emotion   in,    i6i 
the  highest,  introduction,  150 

sq 
the    morality    of,     introduc- 
tion, 25,  151  sq 

Beauty,   54  sq,   153,   171 

Character,    relation    of   to    lit- 
erature,  I   sq 
Composition,    habits   of,    33    sq 
two   principles   of,    41 
begins  with  keenness  of  ob- 
servation, introduction,   57 

sq 

the  necessity  to  rewrite,  30, 
36,  48  sq. 

Description,  78,  79,  83 

Emotion    and   sensation,   42 
of  a  tree,  43  sq 
of   ideas,   introduction 
impersonal  suggestion  of,  51 
sq 
Emotional  effect  of  art,  intro- 
duction, 151  sq 
Euphuism,   87 


Journalism,  30,  55,  218 


Language,   value   of   the   ver- 
nacular,   introduction,    68, 
69,  165,  231   sq 
Leisure,   its  importance  to  the 

writer,   18  sq,  236 
Literature,     an     art    of    emo- 
tional expression,  introduc- 
tion, 41,  and  passim 
the    discipline    of,    introduc- 
tion, ^6  sq 
its    influence    upon    political 
opinion,  215  sq 
Literary  societies,  174,  180 

Poetry,  an  art  requiring  soli- 
tude, 3,  18 

in   prose,   8,   20  sq 

relation   of  character  to,  4 
Provincialism,   15,   16 

Reading,    as   an    art,   1S5 
for  children,    104 
in  publishing  houses,  192 
and   rereading,    197 

Sensation  and  emotion,  42 

Style,  60,   123,   128 

Succession  of  events  in  nar- 
rative, 117 

Supernatural  in  literature,  in- 
troduction, 130  sq 

Translation,  importance  of,  in- 
troduction,   24   sq,    I02   sq 
Truth  to  life,  introduction,   57 

sq 


239 


240 


INDEX 


II 


AUTHORS   AND   TITLES 

"Adalantado     of     the     Seven 

Cities,  The,"   146 
"Aeneid,  The,"  209 
i^schylus,  208 

"Alice    in    Wonderland,"    138 
Amyot,   209 
Andersen,   Hans  Christian,  80, 

84,   85,   105,  203 
Apuleius,   2IO 

"Arabian  Nights,  The,"  103 
Ariosto,    Ludovico,    108 
Aristophanes,    208 
Arnold,  Matthew,  introduction, 

63 
"Arria  Marcella,"  144  sq 
d'Aulnoy,      Marie      Catherine, 

Baronne,   105 


Bacon,   Francis,   100,   loi 
Baudelaire,  Pierre  Charles,  in- 
troduction,  120  sq,  168 
Beckford,  William,  36 
Bible,  The,  64,  107,  165,  213 
"  Bienfaits    de    la    Lune,    Les," 

121 
Bjornson,    Bjornstjerne,    intro- 
duction, 17,  74,  84,  102  sq 
Blackwood's    Magazine,    212 
"Blessed   Damozel,  The,"   37 
"Bluebeard,"    105 
Bohn    Library,    The,    90,    207, 

209 
"Book  of  Job,  The,"  143,  201 
"Book  of  Kings,  The,"  108 
Bronte,   Charlotte,   10 
Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  introduc- 
tion, 86  sq,  no 


Browning,  Robert,  introduc- 
tion,   13,    17,    198,   2n 

Bulwer  Lytton,  Edward 
George  Earle  Lytton,  first 
Baron,  136,  138  sq 

"Burnt    Njal,    Story   of,"    81 

Byron,  Lord  George  Gordon 
Noel,  introduction,  4 

Calderon,  de  la  Barca,  Pedro, 

ic8 
Camoens,  Luis   Vaz   de,    108 
Carlyle,    Thomas,    103,    198 
"  Carmen,"  53 
Chaucer,    Geoffrey,   70 
"  Cinderella,"    104 
Conington,  209 
Conscience,    Henry,    105 
"  Corpus     Poeticum     Boreali," 

210 
"Cossacks,    The,"    220 

Dante  Alighieri,  158,  200,  212, 

213 
"  Daphnis     and     Chloe,"    202, 

209 
Darwin,    Charles,    98 

Erasmus,    98 
Daudet,  Alphonse,  53 
De    Quincey,    Thomas,    63 
Diderot,    Denis,    62 
"Divan,    The,"    108 
Dostoievsky,   Feodor  Mikhailo- 

vich,   220 
Dumas,    Alexandre,    105,    106 

Early    English    Text    Society, 

176 
"Edith   of    the    Swan    Neck," 

"  Eleonora,"  142 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  27,  69 


INDEX 


241 


Encyclopedists,  The,  62 
"  Eothen,"    124 
Euripides,    208 

"Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher, 

The,"  142 
"  Faust,"   103,  211,  213 
Firdusi,  108 

Fitzgerald,    Edward,    109 
Flaubert,    Gustav,   introduction 
"Fleurs  de  Mai,  Les,"  120 
Froude,  James  Anthony,  37,  38, 

63 

"Garden  of  Cyrus,  The,"  97, 

98 
Gautier,   Theophile,   144 
Gibbon,    Edward,    100,    loi 
Giles,  Professor  Herbert,  137 
Goethe,  Johann  Wolfgang  von, 

26,  27,   103,  200,  211,  213 
Gogol,   220 

"Golden    Ass,    The,"    210 
Gray,    Thomas,    37 
Grimm,  Herman,  105 
"Gulistan,    The,"    108 
"Gulliver's    Travels,"    105 

Hafiz,   108 

Heine,  Heinrich,  109,  211,  212 

"  Hereward    the   Wake,"    17 

Homer,   35,  207,  213 

Horace,  209 

Hugo,   Victor,    ij,    106 

Ibsen,  Henrik,   113 
"Iliad,  The,"  208 
"  In    Memoriam,"    26 
Irving,    Washington,    146 

"Jack  and  the  Beanstalk,"  104 
"Jack    the    Giant-killer,"    104 


Johnson,  Samuel,  36,  88,  100 

"Kalevala,    The,"    108,    148 
Kant,    Immanuel,    114 
Keightley,   207 
Ker,  Professor  William  Paton, 

introduction,  117 
Kinglake,   85 
Kingsley,  Charles,  17 
Kipling,  Rudyard,   68,  71,  124 

sg,  173 

Kropotkin,  Prince  Peter  Alex- 
eivich,  221 

La  Morte  Amoureuse,  144 
Lang,  Andrew,  209 
Lanier,  Sidney,  64 
"Lays  of  Ancient  Rome,"   134 
"  Les    Bienf  aits    de    la    Lune," 

121 
"  Little   Poems   in   Prose,"   121 
"Little    Mermaid,    The,"    84 
"Little  Tin  Soldier,  The,"  84 
London  Times,  The,  71 
Loti,    Pierre     (Julien    Viaud), 

124,    126-128 
Lyly,   John,   87 

Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington, 
63,  95,  icx),  loi,  133,  134, 
140 

"  Madame  Bovary,"  introduc- 
tion 

Maeterlinck,   Maurice,    130 

"  Mahabharata,   The,"    108 

Malory,    Sir   Thomas,    87,    212 

Mallett,   211 

"  Manon  Lescaut,"  202 

Marie   de   France,   147 

"Matteo  Falcone,"  53 

de  Maupassant,  Guy,  introduc- 
tion,  52,   53,  80 


242 


INDEX 


Meredith,  George,  introduction, 

14,   17 
Merimee,    Prosper,    53,   220 
Milton,   John,   213 
Moliere,  Jean  Baptiste  Poque- 

lin,  212,  213 
"  Moll   Flanders,"   introduction 
"  Monte  Cristo,"   106 
Morley,  John,  23 
"Morte  d'Arthur,"  212 
Miiller,   Max,   37 
"  Mythology  of  Ancient  Greece 

and   Italy,"   207 

"  Nightingale  of  the   Emperor 
of  China,  and  the  Night- 
ingale of  the  Emperor  of 
Japan,"    84 
Norse  Writers,  72  sq 
"  Northern  Antiquities,"  211 

"Odyssey,  The,"  208 

Palmer,  Edward  Henry,  109 
Percy,   Bishop   Thomas,   2H 
Percy  Society,  The,  176 
Perrault,    Charles,    104 
Petrarch,    Francisco    Petrarca, 

108 
Pierre    Loti     (Julien    Viaud), 

124,   126-128 
Poe,   Edgar  Allan,   120,   142 
Pope,  Alexander,  232 
PreRaphaelite         Brotherhood, 

The,  180 
"Princess,   The,"   219 
"Prophecy    of    Capy»,    The," 

134 
"  Pseudodoxia,"  89 
Pushkin,   220 
"Puss  in  Boots,"  104 


"  Qu*€St-ce-que  VArt?"  156 

"  Ramayana,"    108 
"Rasselas,"    36 
"Religio  Medici,"   89 
"Rip   Van  Winkle,"   146 
"  Robinson    Crusoe,"    105 
Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  13,  37, 

Ruskin,  John,  68,  157,  161 

Saadi,  108 

Saintsbury,    Professor    George, 

64,  96,  121,  196 
Scott,    Walter,    105,    163,    211, 

235 
"Seven    Sisters,   The,"   146 
"Shah-Naraeh,   The,"    io8 
Shakespeare,    William,    9,    10, 
131,  158,  200,  212,  213,  232 
Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  introduction 
"  Sleeping  Beauty,  The,"  104 
Sophocles,    208 
Spencer,  Herbert,  introduction, 

114,    151,    169,    174 
"  Strange  Stories  from  a  Chi- 
nese Workshop,"  137 
"Sturlunga   Saga,   The,"   75 
Swinburne,   Algernon   Charles, 
introduction,   13,  65 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  13,  26,  37, 
50,   65,   152,   207,  219,  235 

Thackeray,  William  Make- 
peace, 10 

Theocritus,  209 

"  Three  Musqueteers,  The," 
106 

"  Through  the  Looking  Glass," 
139 

Tolstoi,  Count  Leo,  introduc- 
tion,  156  sq,  220 


INDEX  243 

Turgeniev,  Ivan,  114,  220,  221      Voltaire,  Francois  Marie  Arou- 

et  de,  62 

;;iJgly  Duckling,  The,"  84  "Wild  Cat,  The,"  104 

Undine,     143,144  "  Wilhelm  Meister,"  103 

Urashima,"  146  WycliflFe,   John,   70 

^^"Sil,   209  Zola,  Emile,   198 


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